The Martial Unity

The spy, or whatever the source of the leak was, was probably a native of the Zurtun town who probably managed to squiggle his way into a place where he could learn important information and relay it back to Fushin.

This would explain why the Kandrian Martial Union did not possess any intelligence on the Britannian Martial Squire that Rui ended up facing and killing. While the Kandrian Martial Union no doubt had a powerful intelligence department that had plenty of means of gathering information with a gigantic network of intelligence sources over a large geographic area, it probably didn’t have access to more information about Fort Zurtun than Fushin himself did due to his unique position and sources and intimate familiarity with the fort.

As much as Rui wanted to, he couldn’t fault the Martial Union too much here. It was a bit unreasonable to expect them to know about a Martial Squire who had covertly been deployed to the fort extremely recently. The Martial royalty contract that Martial Artists signed with the Martial Union stated that intelligence could not be guaranteed to be entirely accurate always. That was not how the intelligence sector worked, and he was cognizant of that fact.

But frankly, he didn’t feel as though he had been done wrong.

(‘If anything…’) Rui grinned. (‘This was the perfect set of events for me.’)

He got to fight a Martial Squire well ahead of when he would normally have gotten to do so had it been a normal grade three mission, after all. Furthermore, he beat his opponent. This would effectively force the Martial Union to concede what was already obvious that he was ready for missions of a higher grade because of his qualifications, accelerating what would otherwise have taken longer.

Everything was fine, except…

(‘I got outplayed by the old man.’) Rui sighed, with a resigned expression. He had mixed feelings on the issue. On one hand, the general’s actions had inadvertently done a lot of good for Rui, on the other hand, he got played.

Perhaps others would have been able to shake this off considering all the benefits, but not Rui.

Perhaps that was a little vain of him, but Rui took pride in his mind and intelligence. His mind was extraordinary, and his intelligence was easily in the genius-level territory. That was why he felt affronted having been outplayed by the old man in their little mind game that the two played against each other. He did not like the idea of being outwitted. He was a sore loser when it came to this.

Of course, they weren’t exactly competing on a level field. The old man was intelligent, no doubt, but more importantly, he was extremely experienced. He had served a lifetime in the field of strategies and tactics in conflicts of all sorts, according to his background. Rui was intelligent but had zero meaningful experience in this field, he was effectively competing against the old man’s wit and vast experience with sheer deductive intelligence alone.

Furthermore, he was clearly at an information disadvantage, making it difficult for him to not be exploited when he didn’t even know that such a thing was a possibility at all. Furthermore, he was constrained by the mission rules and guidelines as well, since he was in the middle of a mission. Reneging on an accepted mission for unjustifiable reasons was an ugly stain on his record that would be publicly visible. Ensuring that didn’t happen was more important than trying to win a mind game against an old fox, even Rui was rational enough to recognize that.

(‘My only consolation is that the Martial Union does not refund, and canceling a mission without justification requires a fee, and also reduced the trustworthiness of Fushin as a client, meaning missions will be more expensive for him because of this.’) Rui mused.

The Martial Union was cognizant of the loopholes that came with the ability to cancel a mission at any time. Thus, several rules, conditions, and penalties had been placed to discourage frivolous or malicious usage of the mission cancellation facility.

(‘Anyways, putting that matter aside, I guess my business here is done.’) Rui sighed, as he grabbed a hold of the corpse of his opponent before skywalking away. He had no intention of returning to Fort Zurtun now that the mission had been canceled. He simply wished the rebels good luck in his heart.

He felt a little bad at the prospect of not seeing Vemy again but didn’t have any emotional connection to her. They were just strangers that spent the night together. He wasn’t going to delay his return to the Kandrian Empire to bid her an awkward goodbye or delay his return to the Kandrian Empire to spend another night with her. At most he could bid her and the Martial Apprentices good luck on the battle and their Martial Paths.

(‘Maybe I should pay the old man a visit before I leave.’) Rui pondered the thought, before shaking his head. (‘Nah, fuck it. I’m in a good mood, why needlessly irk myself over the old man?’)

He simply pedaled away into the sky with the corpse in his hand as he headed back in the direction of the Kandrian Empire carrying the corpse with him. He had already extracted a healing and rejuvenation potion from it, among some other things.

(‘What a strange physiology.’) Rui thought to himself as he could feel that his body did not have the rigidity to structure that clearly came with having solid bones and rigid flesh bound together by fascia, the connective tissue within the body that ensured everything stayed in place.

This opened his eyes to the possibilities of other kinds of bizarre Martial bodies. As time passed, he might come across similarly absurd things. He had a feeling his reaction to these various Martial bodies was going to be no different from his initial incredulous reactions to the many bizarre Apprentice-level techniques he had come across in his life.

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