The Martial Unity

The textbook soon began talking about more practical, down-to-earth matters. Specifically, the occupation of being a licensed Martial Artist. The Martial Union was basically a liaison between customers who wanted to hire Martial Artists, and the Martial Artists themselves. However, not every Martial Artist could complete every mission.

Either they were too weak, or their Martial Art and skillset didn’t match with the pre-requisites of the mission, etc.

Thus, the Martial Union divided missions by type and difficulty.

There were five ranks to difficulty, and each corresponded with the first five Realms of Martial Art; Apprentice, Squire, Senior, Master, Sage. Interestingly enough, the Martial Union didn’t have Transcendent ranked missions, though the reason for this was not specified.

A ranked mission of a particular Realm was a mission whose difficulty was such that; one or multiple Martial Artists of that Realm could complete the mission. An Apprentice-ranked Mission was a mission that one or more Apprentices could complete.

This was to ensure that Martial Artists were assigned mission that was within their ability. It made no sense to assign a Martial Apprentice a Senior-ranked Mission, while giving a Senior an Apprentice-ranked mission.

(‘Makes sense.’) Rui nodded.

Missions were also divided by their type because of this reason. The skillsets needed for different missions all required different skillsets and Martial Art.

Thus, the Martial Union divided missions into the following four classes;

Offense; These were missions that usually required launching an attack on a person, group of people or location with the goal of capturing, incapacitating or killing their opponents.

Defense; These were missions that required the protection of a person, group of people or location with the from harm.

Hunting; A large portion of the Kandrian Empire was uninhabited nature, furthermore a large portion of the Panama continent was uninhabited and unexplored. There large amounts of resources within the fauna, flora and the land of these uninhabited areas. Most mining and resource enterprises hired commissioned Martial Artists of the Martial Union in procuring high-value high-difficulty resources, before processing and reselling them to manufacturers who required said resources. Furthermore, the uninhabited lands of the Panama Continent contained powerful beast species that often hunted in human habitats. These were all mission classified within the Hunting class.

Covert operations; These missions included any missions that were highly clandestine and furtive in nature. Espionage, reconnaissance, infiltration, extraction, assassination, sabotage etc. were the most common kinds of missions within this class of missions.

Miscellaneous; These included somewhat niche missions, or missions with such low difficulty that any martial Artist could complete them. Things like tutelage, manual labour, demonstrations etc fell into them.

Generally, licensed Martial Artists stuck to usually one, maybe two, classes of missions. Martial Artists who mainly engaged in offense-class missions were called Assaulters, Martial Artists who mainly engaged in defense-class missions were called Defenders, Martial Artists who mainly completed Hunting missions were called Hunters and those who completed covert missions were called Shadows.

(‘Interesting…’) Rui pondered about all this information.

,m This classification of missions was quite practical, it allowed for a smoother process of mission assignment/choosing for the Martial Union and Martial Artists.

Being made aware of all of this before discovering his Martial Path made a lot of sense in hindsight. He could train knowing what he was getting into. For one, the textbook mentioned the system of parties, which altered his image of how missions were completed.

The Martial Union graded difficulty of a mission even with the established ranks between low-grade, mid-grade and high-grade difficulty. Many missions had a high difficulty even within the realm they were assigned to, meaning it would be extremely difficult and risk for a single Martial Artist to complete them. Thus, licensed and registered Martial Artists could form officially form groups of usually three to five Martial Artists. All one had to is gather the numbers and sign some paperwork before being officially recognized as a Martial Party. This was quite a popular tendency among Martial Artists, as the burden and risk on individual was greatly minimized and divided between five people, allowing them to complete high-grade missions with safety, as much safety as the Martial World would normally have, that is.

This meant that hyper-specializing in a certain field of Martial Art didn’t necessarily mean he couldn’t apply for different kinds of missions.

This was also another piece of information that was useful to Explorers like himself. There was room for all kinds of Martial Art, the Martial Union wanted Explorers to explore Martial Art knowing the kind of role that Martial Art played in the kinds of missions they would choose.

Rui suspected that he might be an all-rounder, in fact, he suspected he had already discovered a hint of his Martial Path during all the sparring sessions of the Martial Foundation Stage. Though he needed more time to discover and understand more.

Rui closed the textbook. A few hours had passed since he had absorbed himself into all the information he had learnt. His worldview had altered considerably. The new information at hand raised all kinds of new questions.

If Apprentice-level missions existed, and almost all Martial Apprentices were within the Academy, then how did these missions get completed? Were these missions completed by students? This was something that the textbook did not go into. He intended to ask Kane about it when he saw him the next day.

Martial Art could be applied to covert operations in this world? In his previous life, covert operations were performed by state and federal agents trained by the intelligence, law-enforcement and security agencies and bureas of nations. Hand-to-hand combat was a must, but there were many, many other skillsets that these agents were required to master before they could be dispatched on these missions.

Yet it seemed in this world,  there existed Martial Art that were singlehandedly suited and capable of performing covert operations.

Rui scratch his head in confusion, was it really possible for a Martial Artist to be a full-fledged Intelligence agent or a covert operative?

This was just one of the many things in this world that defied his expectations and sense of normalcy.