The Martial Unity

“Hmmm,” Rui hummed as he analyzed the latest happenings. “This is rough,”

“Are we screwed?” Kane sighed. “It was a good run while it lasted.”

“Relax, we’re not screwed,” Rui replied. “However, we can forget about trying to explore already discovered floors. From here on out, we should avoid it altogether. We always planned to reach this stage, but perhaps we’ll have to accelerate the process. There are too many threats around us. I don’t feel comfortable with all of this.”

He got up, heading for the door. “I’ll be back,”

“Where are you headed?” Kane asked.

“I’ll register as a bounty hunter,” Rui replied. “Get prepped, we’re going dungeon raiding soon enough.”

Rui headed towards Deacon Industries where the basic registration process was happening. What surprised Rui when he got there was how large the crowd was.

(‘What the…’) He frowned as he got in line. (‘Why on Earth are so many people joining? Surely most of these adventurers have other arrangements. Patrons, contracts, places of employment… How can they possibly also take up something as time-consuming as bounty-hunting when’-)

His thoughts halted when he realized the answer. (‘It’s because it’s an open-ended bounty that they can afford to register. Simply registering is not problematic since it does not convey any burdens or responsibilities. It simply allows them to access the intelligence that Deacon Industries is offering to bounty hunters and allows Deacon Industries to keep score on the number of Martial Squire registering as bounty hunters for this mission.’)

What that meant was that even if they did not find the Voider, or even try to, they would still have no problems, however, if they did find and kill him, then they could immediately provide his corpse to Deacon Industries without any issues.

Furthermore, they could access information on his more easily too. Furthermore, the non-committal nature of the registration meant that there was no issue with spending as much or as little time whenever they wanted.

It was quite convenient and there was no harm in registering.

(‘Hm, quite the good strategy on Deacon’s part,’) Rui mused with mixed feelings as he navigated the crowd.

He only intended to register to be able to access the investigative reports on himself, and nothing else.

He was aware that he was probably giving himself away to a certain extent since Chairman Deacon could be sure that the Voider would register to keep tabs on his own investigation, but he had decided that this trade-off was worth it.

Even if Chairman Deacon became more certain that the Voider was among this group, the number of Martial Squires that had already registered and would continue to register would make the suspect pool absurdly large and impractical. It was no different from having no clues whatsoever.

Further, Chairman Deacon would also have to consider the possibility that the Voider was accessing information through an associated third party, which further made his job harder.

Ultimately, the negatives were not worth the positives.

However, Rui was not naive enough to think that there was no scheme in any of this. While the world might simply think Chairman Deacon was simply trying to be good-hearted and help the Martial Squires. Rui was shrewd enough to make out how Chairman Deacon could exploit the fact that the Voider would be paying attention to the investigation for manipulation.

There were ways that he could potentially manipulate the Voider by planting false information that would cause the Voider to act a certain way, or choose to make a certain decision that Chairman Deacon would be on the lookout for.

For instance, if Chairman Deacon managed to convince the Voider that they had managed to develop a way that allowed them to narrow down the Voider’s positions through his Martial attire marked with some esoteric substance, then the Voider, if convinced, would naturally do his best to dispose of it and procure an alternative perhaps.

In that case, Chairman Deacon could potentially notice any suspicious movements. Worst case scenario, if he kept tabs on all the Martial Squires, he might just be able to catch someone who would act exactly as they would if they were afraid of getting caught.

Essentially, Chairman Deacon was also using this bounty to get into the mind of the Voider and manipulate him to reveal himself using elaborate deception, traps, and even misinformation.

Rui was pretty sure that this was the true intention of Chairman Deacon.

Still, he wasn’t fazed. (‘Neat, but that’s not going to work on me.’)

Had it been any other Martial Squire, they would not be able to avoid falling into his trap and eventually revealing themselves. But Rui was probably the only Martial Squire shrewd enough to not only understand the true purpose of the publicized intelligence but also capable enough to avoid the traps and pitfalls that came with that.

(‘All he needs is a single slip-up to accelerate his progress in his investigation,’) Rui narrowed his eyes as he eventually got to the registration part. (‘We definitely need to discover our own floors and harvest esoteric resource deposits there. No amount of scheming will be able to get us if we’re there where they can’t reach us.’)

Every time a new floor was discovered, the Martial Squires who discovered it informed the Shionel Adventurer Guild which rewarded them extremely handsomely for the discovery. This was to ensure that no Martial Squire kept new floors a secret when they discovered it.

Thankfully, Rui didn’t give a damn about the measly reward compared to the esoteric plunders of a whole floor. Thus, he intended to keep it a secret.

When the floors that he would discover would naturally be discovered by other Martial Squires, they would only find empty floors that were infested with monsters but not a single deposit of esoteric resources left.

There was no amount of scheming that would be able to make up for such a drastic gap in explorative and navigation capability, and Rui intended to show Chairman Deacon that he did not stand a chance.