The Martial Unity

WHOOSH!

Rui and Amare disappeared from the place in the blink of an eye, appearing elsewhere in a different forest within. One that was markedly different from the one that they were in just a moment prior. Rui had teleported them away from what would have been an annoying venture to deal with.

They found themselves in a place surrounded by tall grass that exceeded even their height, while finding themselves standing on a marshy plain that stretched a great distance in each direction.

The sound of crickets hung in the air along with the sound of a strange hiss that hung in the air.

One that lingered with peril.

“Are you sure that was the right decision?” Amare gazed at him with a serious expression. “Now they know that whatever the anomaly is, it can disappear. Won’t that be bad for us?”

“Not as bad as if they find out that we are a hostile entity. They think that we might be some strange anomaly, the kind that could be studied, though I’m sure they also suspect that we are a hostile entity as well, with how many troops they had with them. Each moment we remained there, we would be giving them more and more information about what we are. And once we had remained there for long enough. They would eventually identify us one way or another.”

His rationale was solid enough.

“Besides, they did not have any space-time capabilities to actually understand what had happened based purely on the subtle ripples through space and time. My stealth hid the energy signatures of the technique. Right now, they probably just know that the anomaly can disappear in the face of threats. That does likely suggest the behavior of a new mutated species.”

“Mutated species? Are those common?”

“The therianthropes actively cause them to happen,” Rui replied. “They seek mutations because mutations are the path forward to evolution. Mutations open up potential for new and unknown biological mechanisms that can serve as future biotechnology for the therianthropes.”

“So they want to capture us and study us?”

“They would want to kill us if they knew who we were. More importantly, we need to keep going; those bastards will find us again. Ah…”

His eyes sharpened as he directed a sweeping gaze around the area in which they were. “Be careful, we are surrounded by giant pythons. We are in the territory of the Lamia Clan, who are bonded with snakes and have them all across their territory. But, unfortunately…”

Rui reached out for a particular fly that sat on tall grass.

BZZZ…

“…they can still track us. So we are not secure here; we need to keep moving while I find a solution to this problem.”

She nodded as the two of them took off, sprinting away into the distance in the direction of the core of the continent of Kiriket. Rui found it unfortunate that even after all the preparations that he had made, he did not have the ability to completely evade Kiriket’s senses and power.

Still, that only made him more fired up to succeed.

It also made him quite excited about how powerful the therianthropes were. Especially within their own territory, where they had an enormous amount of animals and beasts that they could control. While their advantage within their territory was not as large as the advantage the elves had within their territory, it was still quite decent, making it difficult even for Rui to overcome them so easily.

When it came to surveillance in particular, these were clearly superior even to the elves, which Rui had found basically impossible to hide from in Genora without preparations.

BZZZT…!

His ears pricked as he heard the sound of buzzing insectile wings from far away in the distance.

“Tsk…” Rui tutted. “They’re even following us into the Lamia Clan’s territory; they certainly are persistent bastards, I’ll give them that, but I need to find a way to avoid their entropic detection.”

“Why not destroy all the flies near us?” she raised an eyebrow. “You can hide the energy signature with your stealth and quickly crush all of them with your fingers.”

Rui shook his head. “That would be pointless. The destruction of the flies would leave a trail that could allow them to find us nonetheless. Since they would just need to follow the path of destroyed flies.”

“Ah…”

“I’ll just need to find a way to deal with the fact that the flies are following us,” Rui remarked. “But the biggest issue is that I can’t hide the entropy that we are releasing. It’s a law of physics that one releases entropy and that entropy always increases. I’m not a Martial Transcendent yet, so I can’t violate that law yet.”

Rui wasn’t going to bang his head against a law of physics; he needed a better solution that could help him deal with the entropic surveillance flies that seemed to be everywhere on the continent. He had to admit that he could understand why the therianthropes did not bother manning the borders personally when they had such a powerful sensory system. While Rui was not a stealth specialist, he was quite powerful in regards to his ability to hide, ever since he had learned it from Master Reina as a Martial Senior.

’Think…’ He sharpened his eyes. ’What can I do to evade surveillance?’

His mind surged as he conjured up many different possibilities. One idea he had was that he could try and create multiple false trails by creating a technique that allowed him to create entropy elsewhere in a manner that resembled when he was using his stealth. This way, the people pursuing him would have no choice but to split up into multiple groups to pursue each of the paths that he would create as red herrings. The latest_epɪ_sodes are on_the novel✦fire.net

Unfortunately, he suspected that would only alarm them more into taking the threat even more seriously and focus on deploying more troops to capture the anomaly that he and Amare represented, making their lives that much harder.