The Martial Unity

Chapter 2554: A Journey

Soon enough, Rui was done speaking to the few more people he deemed important enough to speak to before leaving.

Eventually, it was time.

”Be careful,” Emperor Rael told his son. ”Human civilization is important, but your life is even more so.”

”Iʼll keep that in mind, father.” Rui nodded, shifting his gaze in the direction he was to depart in. ”Well then, goodbye.”

WHOOSH

And just like that, he leaped off the border fort wall, heading off into the distance at a jogging pace. He needed to conserve stamina, so he couldnʼt just bust out his top speed even though it most certainly would have helped him get the Sekigahara Confederate sooner.

More importantly, he needed to avoid monsters and beasts of the Beast Incursion. It would be stupid to fight each and every single one of them that he ran into on the way to the Sekigahara Confederate, after all. He would take forever to reach his destination at that rate.

He had upgraded the image of the Lesser Phantomind Void from Master Uma to Sage Damian, allowing it to function better as a misdirection technique. This allowed him to avoid monsters and beasts easier without needing to confront each and every single one of them.

Additionally, he used the Forge of Creation to create a new technique spontaneously that also masked his presence physically.

He relied on manipulating the optical density of light in such a manner that light curled around him, making him invisible for the most part. He also hampered any scent or sound that beasts could use to track him.

This was his plan for smoothly traveling from destination to destination.

”Well, letʼs see.” Rui assessed a map of the Panama Continent. ”I wonʼt be able to make it to Sekigahara Confederate on the first stretch. I will need to find a place to rest along the way.” Thankfully, human civilization was still widespread enough for him to run into plenty of places in the travels that were to come.

And yet, even though he had merely just commenced his journey, he was already getting a better understanding of the impacts of the Beast Incursion on all of human civilization.

The Kandrian Empire, which was once teeming with an influx of travelers from across all of East Panama and even beyond, had now been isolated from the entire world, aside from seafaring.

The once resplendent human domain had been turned into a landscape of beasts and monsters.

Rui knew that the Kandrian Empire was particularly beset with monsters and beasts compared to most of human civilization due to the fact that Sage-level powerhouses faced greater onslaught. However, he still found it shocking to witness the sheer number of monsters and beasts that were in the vicinity of the Kandrian Empire.

Any ordinary human who dared to leave the Kandrian Empire would meet a swift death.

He felt a pang of pain when he juxtaposed this to the image of the Kandrian ports of entry in the past that had been teeming with enormous lines of people and carriages who yearned to enter one of the most powerful nations in the entire world.

It was difficult to fathom the sheer number of people who were suffering due to the Beast Incursion, people who had had their lives ruined in the blink of an eye. While Rui was largely unaffected and could even regard the Beast Incursion with a hint of fondness, he didnʼt want to forget the kind of horrific apocalypse that it actually was.

The Era of Darkness was not just a cool name, it was a name that truly described the state of humanity.

Even as he ran North-West from the Kandrian Empire straight to the Sekigahara Confederate, his senses detected countless modern ruins of human establishment that were completely stampeded over by beasts and monsters.

Human civilization wasnʼt exclusively comprised of large nations and powerful forces. There were countless small settlements across the entirety of the continent consisting of small groups of people who, for a variety of reasons, simply werenʼt part of any nation.

These people were entirely doomed.

They never stood a chance.

It wasnʼt just people, it was also massive swathes of infrastructure as well. There were countless joint international organizations that maintained international infrastructure such as high-speed carriage track networks between all human nations.

It was precisely this network that allowed for countries across the entire world to engage in large amounts of trade with each other despite the astronomical amount of distance between nations.

And now, an intricate and sophisticated network of tracks and roads that connected the entirety of human civilization had been all but wiped out.

The sheer amount of damage the human civilization had taken was deeply painful. Really, the only nation to have benefited to any extent was the Kandrian Empire that averted destruction through the apocalypse. Thinking about how close the Kandrian Empire had come to being destroyed made Rui want to ditch their three enemies, but he steeled his determination and forged forth to the Sekigahara Confederate.

And yet, as dreadful as the state of human civilization was, Rui felt better than ever.

”The Kandrian Empire is truly suffocating.”

Now that he had left it once more, he realized just how stuffy the empire was. Nobody and nothing to challenge him-his father skillfully managed him while the only other person who had the power to challenge him mostly approved of whatever he found himself doing. And now, having exited the Kandrian Empire and entirely off by himself, he felt a deep sense of freedom. The feeling of autonomy that he had missed permeated through his entire mind.

A feeling that he had missed since his voyage to find the Divine Doctor.

And now he was on a new journey.

A journey of discovery.

A journey of self-discovery.

And a journey of salvation.

He had no idea what the future held for him, but he knew that he was ready to face it.