The Martial Unity

Once a dedicated medical team began helping the Gatekeeper return to his peak, Rui bade the man farewell.

“I shan’t forget my debt to you, Void Prince. Rest assured, I shall repay you for this boon one day,” he solemnly swore to Rui before the latter departed. Rui left him to his own devices.

His road to rehabilitation wouldn’t be easy, considering his age and just how absurd his recovery process would be.

There was a price to pay for healing from the Divine Doctor, of course.

First, the Emperor was healed from an incurable disease.

And now, the Gatekeeper was suddenly healed from a grave condition.

This alone was far from enough to conclude anything, but it was the start of a pattern.

Rui knew that any further application of the Divine Doctor’s services needed to be limited until after his father regained all his political power. He would be entering risky territory otherwise. He knew that he had already attracted the attention of the three Sage-level powerhouses that rivaled Kandria.

He would need to wait until his father chalked up an elaborate long-term grand plan for the elevation of Kandria above all others.

Until then, everything needed to stay below the radar.

He heaved a sigh, shaking his head lightly as he went through his to-do list to make sure he hadn’t missed anything.

“Divine Doctor stuff; check. Elder Tree stuff; check. Alien lifeform stuff; check. Faction stuff; check. Martial Union stuff; check…” He pondered about what he had yet to do. “Panamic Martial Federation stuff is still in the air, but…”

This was not something that required his immediate attention.

The Panamic Martial Federation obligation was not a formal obligation but a semi-formal one. In addition, the time constraints were rather lax.

Martial Masters were busy, after all, especially soon after they broke through.

“I’ll leave it for later.”

He would be lying if he said he wasn’t interested and curious about what the Panamic Martial Federation had to say.

This was an organization founded by and constituted of Martial Artists and Martial Artist-led organizations for the sake of furthering the collective interest of Martial Artists and Martial Art. This meant that the Britannian Empire, which was an unshakable Martialocracy, was officially recognized as a part of the Panamic Martial Federation, but the Kandrian Empire, Republic of Gorteau, and the Sekigahara Confederate weren’t.

This was an organization founded by and constituted of Martial Artists and Martial Artist-led organizations for the sake of furthering the collective interest of Martial Artists and Martial Art. This meant that the Britannian Empire, which was an unshakable Martialocracy, was officially recognized as a part of the Panamic Martial Federation, but the Kandrian Empire, Republic of Gorteau, and the Sekigahara Confederate weren’t.

Rui could choose to partake in it as an independent Martial Artist or as a member of the Martial Union, which represented its own power bloc within the power dynamics of the association.

While he did not intend to ignore it, it was simply not a high priority at the moment. In fact, there was almost nothing that was as high of a priority as taking his first step as a Martial Master.

It was finally time to commence his first training phase as a Martial Master.

He had already booked a rather large training Master-level chamber in Daracol.

Daracol was reserved for all things related to Martial Masters.

While many nations simply couldn’t afford to have Martial Artists of the Upper Realms train within their borders, the Kandrian Empire and the Martial Union had reserved large swathes of the land solely for the training of Martial Masters and even Martial Sages to a limited degree.

As a Martial Master, Rui simply couldn’t train in population centers. The risks were too high.

All it took was one mistake for millions of people to be exposed to a Martial Embodiment, causing mass mental damage. That was even more true for Rui; a single glance at his Martial Embodiment would spell brain death for everybody who beheld him. “Please let me know if you need anything, Your Mastery.”

Rui nodded at the assistant outside of his large training chamber.

CLACK.

The gates were shut, leaving him all to himself.

The moment he was alone, he dove into his mind in regard to how he wanted to spend the next few years training.

“…I’ll undertake one project this time.”

He wanted to produce an outcome that was extremely refined and of the supremely highest quality that he was able to muster. He had much cognitive room for more active techniques ever since he broke through to the Master Realm, but he didn’t want to saturate it with sub-optimal techniques.

Because he was young, he knew he could develop powerful techniques in a fraction of the time that it took others. Thus, he was far more concerned about making sure that the quality of his martial art remained extremely high, especially since there were no areas in which he lacked a foundation.

“Offense is important enough to have my full undivided attention and effort.”

With that decision in place, he was ready to get started on his next training phase, one that was dedicated solely to bolstering his lack of conventional offense.

“Project Heavy Hitter.” The name of the project signified its objective. He needed something that bolstered his offense heavily and synergized extremely well with his Martial Mind and systems of thought. It would most likely mean that he would not be able to use the technique too well without his Martial Mind, but with it, he would gain the tremendous finishing power that he had always lacked for some time now.

Prior to his battle with Master Vertol, he had had some tentative avenues that he could pursue, but after he had been exposed to the astronomical power of the Yin-Yang Shield that made it a grade-ten technique in the first place, he knew that he wanted to explore its principles and see if they could be adapted to offense.

The reason he saw much potential in this avenue of pursuit was because the Yin-Yang Shield was able to exert a terrifying amount of damage despite being defensive in nature. Thus, how much damage would it be able to exert if its principles were leveraged specifically for the sake of offense?

It was something that he could not even begin to imagine.

It was a thought that excited him.

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