The Martial Unity

“Welcome to the Kingdom of Violis, sir,” An officer smiled at him before passing him through.

“Thank you,” Rui nodded before leaving the transit port office and heading across the busy streets of the Kingdom of Violis.

He didn’t want to keep Kane waiting, but he couldn’t just leave the nation either. Based on his understanding of the intelligence-gathering capabilities of the Martial Union’s intelligence department, the amount of information that they possessed on any given subject of any sort depended on the importance and necessity of that information as well as the difficulty of obtaining that information.

He was relatively certain that the Martial Union would very soon find out that he had entered the Kingdom of Violis. Of course, they wouldn’t set up a tail or a spy on him, since the importance and necessity of his current whereabouts and intentions were not all that important.

He intended to make sure that there was nothing wrong on the surface of the matter, thus he intended to use his Martial Union account, which was widely accepted as a valid form of payment to book a hotel and spend some money on some items here and there before setting out.

It would not be enough to fool the Martial Union if they conducted a serious investigation, however, it was unlikely they would do this any time soon, they had no reason to, and the Martial Union, like all intelligence agencies, was probably very particular regarding what they could spend the resources of their department on. At the moment, Rui probably did not qualify.

Half a day later, it was time.

STEP

He quickly jumped over the fence that marked the border the nation, before heading away from the nation, as he traveled to the Republic of Henerin, where Kane was situated at the moment. They had agreed to meet outside the Republic before heading towards the Shionel Confederation.

Thankfully, the distance was not that great, and it was only half-an-hour later that Rui met up with Kane.

STEP

“Hey,” Rui greeted him, landing on the ground. “You are sure you followed all the steps, right?”

“Yeah yeah don’t worry, I made sure that I did everything you said,” Kane reassured him.

Rui had given Kane precise instructions to ensure that the Martial Union would only find that he hadn’t moved from the Republic of Henerin, ever since he entered it.

Of course, with Kane, however, there was also the matter of his family keeping an eye out for him, thus Rui had had him go through more steps to obfuscate his family from figuring out the truth.

If the Arrancar Family ever managed to catch wind of the fact that he was not where he claimed to be, then they could raise an inquisition to the Martial Union and the Martial Union would quickly realize that the two of them had left their last known locations.

Rui could only do his best and create as much of an information illusion as he could. Still, he was not an intelligence agent, and he did not think that his efforts matched up to actual covert agents who successfully fed foreign nations false information using more refined versions of the methods that he was using.

“Alright, let’s head out then,” Rui nodded before the two of them headed towards the Shionel Confederation in the shortest route that they could find on map.

The two of them were wearing the indistinct Martial attire that they had commissioned that purposely did not strongly attribute to any particular nation’s style. Their masks too were different from what they normally used in missions.

The Shionel Confederation was quite far away from the Kandrian Empire, even with their remarkable speed, it would take them a few hours to reach their destination.

“You’ve grown faster,” Kane complimented him with a surprised expression beneath his mask. “Much faster than I remember you being, is this thanks to the Gale Force Breathing technique that you developed?”

Rui nodded. Kane was easily keeping up with him relaxed while Rui was going all out with Gale Force Breathing, Outer Convergence, and Parallel Walking. Rui had known this, but seeing Kane casually keep up with him with a fraction of his speed was still quite revealing.

“You’ve grown faster too, it seems,” Rui huffed.

“Well, stealth isn’t the only thing I’ve improved, I am an evasive maneuverer, after all,” Kane replied casually. “At my current level, I can forget about facing the monsters of the Shionel Dungeon head-on, my only option is to avoid them, so I have been polishing my agility and speed to a higher level.”

The two chit-chatted on the way there, though that wasn’t too easy since Rui needed to maintain Gale Force Breathing which made it more difficult to converse with him.

“There are floors in the Shionel Dungeon where your specialty is especially relevant,” Rui informed him. “At that time, you’re going to be the one that will be leading the charge, my friend. Of course, I have made preparations for that as well myself, so I do not believe I’ll be left behind.”

Rui had extensively studied the intelligence of the monsters of the Shionel Dungeon, he had spent quite some time building predictive models on them, although they weren’t complete yet due to a lack of complete intelligence. Unfortunately, second-hand data did not compare to observing them first-hand.

He pulled off the same trick with the K’ulnen Tribe of Vilun Island, but at that time, he and Kane had spent quite some time observing their targets, allowing Rui to build a predictive model of their targets better due to more access to more accurate information.

Of course, once he began observing the monsters in person, he would be able to develop better predictive models for them, that was one of the things that he was hoping for when they finally actually entered the Shionel Dungeon.

Time passed as the two of them ran across the continent, due to the great distance between them as well as the many countries and other settlements in between they were unable to maintain their top speed the entire time.

At long last, they finally reached the Shionel Confederation six hours later.