The Martial Unity

2205  Finally

In the past few months, Rui had been spending time alone, meditating as he thought about a variety of topics and matters.

Among them included things like who he was.

Just as Master Gern had recommended, he began thinking about who he was more than he had in the past three years prior.

It helped. He mulled over the insights that he had gained during his visit to the Panamic Martial Federation.

He had always known that he could be quite irrational; however, he learned what levels of irrationality he could reach. He had come to gain deeper insights into himself over time.

Of course, even with his current level of power, he wasnʼt anywhere remotely close to reaching the Sage Realm.

Still, he did feel like he was making progress.

One issue was that reaching the Martial Soul was a path filled with far more uncertainty than even the path to the Martial Mind. At least with the latter, he could measure progress in an objective manner. With the former, he was left with vague intuitions in regard to whether he had made any actual progress at all.

It could be deeply frustrating, yet he knew that that was par for the course.

In addition to introspection, he also dedicated himself to heavy training and sparring at all levels. By sealing his Martial Mind and Martial Heart, he could spar against a much larger variety of opponents and train his intuition and instinct.

He had firmly chosen not to return to the manifold, for he didnʼt really have any projects to work on that were worth embarking on at this juncture in time. The reason he had been anxious to finish the Yin-Yang Spear was because his offense had been too deficient to leave alone.

However, the merits of cooping himself up in the manifold to force a project out of him were little if he did it for the sake of doing it, as opposed to doing it in Adaptive Evolution to something else that he was unable to adaptively evolve to at all.

After all, Adaptive Evolution was a reactive phenomenon.

One thing he had cautiously tried exploring was what happened when he merged Yin-Yang Spear with Muspelheim.

Of course, he didnʼt do something as dangerous as actually activating the combination.

That would be deeply foolish.

He had almost died the last time he had done so, inadvertently.

However, he couldnʼt help but grow deeply fascinated by how the combination of two grade-ten techniques resulted in a potent inferno that appeared to be temporarily self-sustaining. So much so that it had become the basis of his latest moniker, the Dawnbringer.

It appeared that his father wasnʼt able to give him a title that had the word ʼvoidʼ in it in time.

Regardless, because of how absurdly lethal and dangerous the combination clearly was, he was limited to speculating as to why it was the way it was. He had several hypotheses based on his understanding of Physics.

Unfortunately, he couldnʼt really test any of them due to being unable to activate the fusion of techniques that he had taken to calling Sun.

He was left to speculate about how powerful he would be if he could harness this power safely. That, too, wasnʼt something he could work on.

”Tsk, will the war come already?” he grumbled to himself. ”These past few months have been too little time for me to get anything done outside the manifold and yet I have nothing worth getting done inside the manifold.”

The diminishing returns from pursuing more sparring combat were not worth wasting his lifespan in the manifold for. He only had limited youth. Even if it was extended due to his early breakthrough and his longevity potion, he did not want to waste years on fruitless pursuits. If he was going to burn through his youth fourteen times faster, then it needed to be for an extremely good reason with great yields.

That was why he limited himself to spending the past few months outside the manifold as he didnʼt have any meaningful avenues to explore within it.

While introspection and sparring took most of his time, he also spent a bit of his time helping out the Kandrian Empire by breaking Martial Artists through not just to the Apprentice Realm, of course, but also to the Senior and Master Realms.

In the past few months, Rui had broken through hundreds of high-grade Martial Squires to the Senior Realm and nearly a dozen Seniors to the Master Realm.

Both of these were incredible boons to the Kandrian Empire that had not gone unnoticed by external powers, Rui was certain. He could only hope that it would accelerate the advent of the third Great East Panamic War.

And perhaps his wishes came true, for—

BZZT!

He glanced at his comms artifact with a bored expression before his eyes lit up with joy.

[President Raymond of the Republic of Gorteau declares war on the Kandrian Empire.]

”Finally!” Rui exclaimed with a moment of happiness. ”About damn time.”

In place of the usual forlorn severity that one would expect to find, Rui only experienced ecstasy and excitement.

The message he had gotten was from the war council formed by his father, the leaders of the Royal Army, the Royal Navy, and the Martial Union. After all, these were the most important leaders that would represent the net military power of the Kandrian Empire. He had been invited to a meeting with all these big shots.

He wasnʼt surprised, of course. His father had already informed him that he planned to involve him in the strategic and tactical decision-making of the war in his capacity as a Martial Artist.

On top of that, there was no way that he could possibly not be there. Just the fact that he had power over the Divine Doctor and the Manifold and was the reason behind the mass breakthroughs meant that he had a voice in this affair.