His first genuine battle in the Squire Realm.
His first victory in the Squire Realm.
His spar against Squire Kyrie did not even remotely count as a proper battle, that was so elementary that Kyrie had even withheld from sky-walking in combat which would have allowed her to dominate Rui with her superior experience. She held back to allow Rui to express and test himself against her and gain a better understanding of what he had and what he was missing before mopping the floor with him.
The training spars against his two Squire habilitators were even more meaningless. He had still been mastering his power back then and hadn’t mastered a single technique at that point.
He felt like he had finally gotten a good grasp of what he could achieve in combat and what he couldn’t. He was no longer as dominating in combat as he used to be in the Apprentice Realm. Of course, he had grown far stronger than when he was a Martial Apprentice, but his competition had grown even fiercer.
This battle had shown him he shouldn’t be as satisfied with himself as he was. He had run into an opponent in the same age group as him who possessed a defense that made a fool of his offensive techniques and possessed combat speed with his whip techniques that also significantly surpassed that of Rui.
All of this came with the power of synergy and compatibility. His Martial body and techniques must have been born for each other. Or at the very least, that was the impression that Rui got.
Ultimately, Rui did manage to win. But this victory cleared his head of the fog that had recently been occupying his vision. Now that he had successfully become a Martial Squire, he lacked clarity on the path forward. Before breaking through to the Squire Realm, he had extremely concrete and clear goals that made it exceedingly simple to know what he ought to do, he had lost some of that when he became a Martial Squire.
Of course, he still had very long-term goals such as fixing the incompatibility of the VOID algorithm with the Martial Art of this world. But that was exactly that; a long-term goal, something that may very well take his entire life to fix considering how difficult it was. It was a goal whose path to achieving was not very clear, at this point in time.
Another long-term goal was to become a Martial Senior. This was yet another goal that he naturally looked at now that he successfully became a Martial Squire, but again, the path to Martial Senior was not something that was very clear to him. He hadn’t even met one thus far.
But now that he actually fought against another Marital Squire, he could see one path forward.
“To align my Martial Art with myself, and against everything else.”
It sounded like a meaningless statement, but it succinctly encompassed the truth. He needed to harness the power of synergy between Martial Art and Martial Body to move forward, while also increasing the synergy of the VOID algorithm against all opponents. He decided he was going to dedicate his all to these two goals and go all out into accomplishing them.
These were two conditions he could be certain would help in progressing his Martial Art to a higher level.
When he opened his eyes, they were no longer searching. They were fixated on the future, and on his goals. His approach to training and growth would have to fundamentally change from when he was a Martial Apprentice.
“Huff…” He sighed, getting up as he stretched his body, glancing at that of his opponent.
(‘You were strong.’) Rui thought to himself sincerely. (‘Thank you for what you have given me. Sorry, but I won’t be able to give your body a burial. I’m sure the Martial Union will be pleased to obtain your body and gauge its secrets.’)
It was possible that the Kandrian Martial Union would be able to obtain intelligence on the Britannian Empire from the objects that he was carrying, as well as his Martial Body. After all, the nations did not necessarily have identical evolution processes. His body would serve as a valuable avenue for research for the Martial Union.
(‘But first, I need to finish my mission.’)
Rui glanced over to the right where Mt Zurtun was situated. Rui was grateful that the battlefield was such an unmissable landmark because without it he would have no clue where he was. They had migrated pretty far from the battlefield by sky-walking.
Rui picked left the corpse at that location, they were in a rather remote location in the forest and it was unlikely that anybody would take it. He did take the liberty of covering it up with soil lest it is consumed by some creature.
(‘Alright then, let’s get back.’) Rui pulled out his accounter to verify how much time he had left for the mission.
“Huh???” He froze as he read a new message on his accounter.
[Your ongoing mission, mission code number HJN23SPR40053, has been canceled by the client Fushin Hunfer. Please terminate your operation and fulfill the relevant post-mission protocols.]
“But the Hlorn hasn’t been destro-” His eyes widened as he finally realized what was happening.
“That bastard…” Rui murmured. “His goal was for me to fight the Martial Squire, not the weapon. The reason he canceled the mission must be because the battle is going well.”
His goal was never to destroy the weapon, he wanted to commandeer it and make it his own! That was the only logical explanation for why he would cancel the mission. The destruction of the weapon was now against his interests.
“As for why he commissioned the mission in the first place. He must have gotten the intelligence of a Martial Squire being deployed by the Britannian Empire to reinforce Fort Zurtun extremely recently from some proprietary source from within the fort itself, likely some secret spy that had managed to squiggle into a place where they could learn classified intel and pass it on to Fushin remotely.” Rui realized.