The Martial Unity

This meant that Rui had underestimated the kind of information that Chairman Deacon was able to gather. Of course, this wasn’t a particularly deep fault on his end, but due to a lack of understanding of how deep the intelligence-gathering capabilities of Deacon industries were. He remembered feeling somewhat similarly about Guildmaster Bradt Patrick, who had also exceeded his expectations. Perhaps he needed to reevaluate how he evaluated other normal human beings.

(‘At least I can be more careful from here on out,’) Rui mused to himself. It was a miscalculation, but fortunately, it was the more benign kind rather than the damning kind. However, now that he saw that Chairman Deacon had access to this kind of information, he could more or less figure out how he had come about such information.

(‘He must have extensively gathered the descriptive accounts of Martial Squires who have been to the twelfth floor, in a combination with his own personal Martial Squires who must have done some basic scouting and surveillance in the dungeon.’) Rui figured.

However, he was once more in a predicament where he could not drastically cause any change in patterns without causing Chairman Deacon to grow suspicious about it.

He would need to purposely fall for their traps to at least a minor extent, meaning he would need to abide by their predictions. He would need to ensure that he didn’t get an image of him taken, and certainly ensure that he didn’t get captured, that would be game over without any shred of a doubt.

After he passed this ordeal, he would be able to more prudent measures, since this would not be strange given that the Voider would then know that someone was specifically targeting him. Thus any countermeasures that the Voider took after that would not be suspicious given his obvious awareness of some group actively hunting him in the Shionel Dungeon with a clearer understanding of some of his patterns.

Chairman Deacon proceeded to lay out the entire plan before him. The sixteen Martial Squires were assigned particular areas in the remaining section of unharvested esoteric deposits on the twelfth floor of the Shionel Dungeon. Each of them had been instructed to ensure that they did not surveil overlapping areas with their peers in the Shionel Dungeon. In this case, they had to move away and ensure that there were no redundancies in the areas in which they were surveilling. They had to keep their recorders on standby and capture the images of all the Martial Squires who appeared in their vicinity and observe their harvesting. The Voider undoubtedly possessed an unparalleled ability to extract esoteric mineral and organic ore deposits from the Shionel Dungeon, thus any Martial Squire that extracted resources in a strange manner at a rate that far exceeded the standard means could be reasonably assumed to be the Voider. Their identity was to be captured and was to be recorded before the Martial Squire engaged with them.

The reason for this was that any Martial Squire that would get into a fight with the Voider had a high chance of dying. The sheer combat ability demonstrated by them when they soloed the second floor was immense. Thus they were suspected to be an S-rank veteran Martial Squire with decades of experience, who was just on the very cusp of becoming a Martial Senior. Thus it was too dangerous to try and provoke such a Martial Squire alone.

After all, if they died in the process of picking a fight with them, then the data that they had recorded would also be lost. Since communications were also highly jammed in the Shionel Dungeon, any recording from recording devices could not be remotely transmitted. Thus, if they died in a fight, their bodies would be consumed by a taipan, and the recording device on their body was as good as gone.

Chairman Deacon was more anxious about getting his hands on direct and tangible evidence and information on the Voider. There were a whole plethora of measures that could be undertaken when he had this information, and it was more important than gambling trying to take down a dangerous ability unprepared around his abilities. If the opportunity to fight and kill him presented itself in the very first operation, then it probably was the case that they would run into opportunities in the future where they would be more prepared.

Thus at the moment, Chairman Deacon had stressed the importance of gathering as much information on the Voider than fighting them.

“In fact,” Chairman Deacon said. “I would rather you simply watch them even if they’re standing right in front of you with their back turned to you.”

That showed that Chairman Deacon valued information on the Voider more than just killing the Voider, at least at the moment.

(‘I see, he intends to try and replicate the means that I’m using to extract the esoteric resources of the Shionel Dungeon as fast and as easily as I do,’) Rui quickly realized this when he analyzed Chairman Deacon’s intentions.

This was understandable. If he could somehow replicate Rui’s methods, then he would be able to achieve a level of dominance in the supplier market that would be absolutely unimpeachable. He would achieve a level of growth that would put his already high growth up till now to shame.

If he managed to replicate Rui’s methods, then beating Guildmaster Bradt would certainly be very much a realistic probability based on the sheer amount of economic and commercial capital that he would have that would allow him to sway many constituents of the Shionel merchant Guild and allow him to buy their votes.

(‘Too bad for him that he cannot replicate my means,’) He shook his head inwardly. Even if he managed to capture Rui alive and tortured the methods out of him, he would not be able to replicate the means whatsoever. The circumstances and factors that came together to allow such a thing to happen were simply beyond his ability to replicate.

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