𝑜𝓋𝐞xt.𝑐𝑶𝔪
The Martial Union received a flood of all kinds of commissions every day. Among these were those of the antagonistic kind, the kind that fell into the offense class or the shadow class of missions. The offense class dealt with head-on missions that involved aggressing straightforward conflict. The shadow class dealt, in part, with missions with the same goal, but done covertly and secretively.
That was the key difference between the offense and shadow class of missions. Killing someone straightforwardly in front of anyone after rushing towards them directly, or killing someone extremely covertly, secretively, and concealingly.
Rui had completed missions of the former, like when he dragged and murdered King Fujilin in public in front of everyone. However, he had never had the opportunity to undertake missions of the latter kind. Mostly because he never had the necessary skillset.
Now, however, that was no longer true. He had the skillset to kill covertly and concealingly, thanks to Project Sniper.
As the title of the Project explicitly said, it allowed him to snipe his targets from a great distance away. It allowed him to kill his targets from an exceedingly high distance away. Higher than would trigger the alarms of sensory bodyguard Martial Artists keeping a watchful eye around their target of protection.
“That’s not all,” Rui muttered as he recalled another trait that made it highly suited for sniping assassinations.
The projectile he was launching was the Sonic Bullet technique. The advantage of this technique was that concentrated sound pockets like the Sonic Bullet technique were difficult to detect directly and ahead of time. The reason for this was that a sound wave or pulse did not produce any of its own sound that could be used to detect it ahead of time. Sound could be used to detect and sense other objects and phenomena that produced sound, sounds in and of themselves could not be detected through that same method.
Similar to how light could be used to perceive other objects that reflected or gave off light, light itself was not something that could be perceived in the same manner because it did not give off light itself.
This meant that detecting the Sound Bullet technique after it had already been launched was difficult. The disadvantage of the technique was that its launch was very easy to detect even without sensory techniques. As long as it happened close enough, the breathing and generation of the sound were detectable phenomena as long as they happened close enough. The process to generate such a concentrated sound pulse was very intense and simply could not be missed even by normal humans.
This was the reason that the Sonic Bullet was normally unfit for assassinations. Normally, it drew too much attention within a certain range.
Normally, that is.
“That doesn’t apply to me.” Rui grinned.
The reason Rui was exempt from this drawback was that he was launching from extraordinary distances away!
It was not possible to distinguish the launch of the technique in the background of meaningless sensory input or ‘white noise’, because it blended and melted entirely! This was what happened over extremely long distances.
Thus, Rui’s strengths allowed him to overcome the greatest obstacle preventing the Sonic Bullet from becoming a force to reckon with in the assassination industry.
This meant that Rui could potentially get away with assassinating people that no Martial Squire could possibly assassinate!
Although he didn’t enjoy the act of murder, he did enjoy exercising the results of his hard work and making a concrete impact in the world with it.
(‘There’s still some time before I can reach a stage where I can use it in missions, however.’) Rui sighed.
He needed to build the muscle memory of executing the ODA system’s protocols as fast as possible, otherwise, he would not be able to guarantee that he would get an accurate shot one hundred percent of the time.
(‘Well, I’ve worked enough on this for today.’) Rui noted as he looked down at his pocket watch. (‘It’s about time for her to arrive soon enough, I suppose.’)
And he was right, soon enough, Squire Casen had arrived.
“Squire Quarrier.” She told him as she landed from the sky. “I got your message about your training commission to me ending soon.”
“That’s right.” Rui nodded. “As I’m sure you’ve realized, I’ve come quite close to mastering the technique that I’ve been training with you. Once I’ve obtained the satisfactory degree of mastery that I’m looking to achieve, the commission will end then.”
“I appreciate you informing me about this in advance.” She told him. “How long do you suspect it will be before the commission finally ends, precisely?”
“Well, we can find out today,” Rui replied nonchalantly as he took his stance.
“Very well.”
She too took her own stance. The air froze under the pressure that the two Martial Squires emanated, Rui had recently requested her to go increasingly all out with her striking offense with each session. Today she didn’t intend to hold back at all to help Rui gauge how far away he was from obtaining the degree of mastering that he hoped to achieve.
Suddenly, she lashed out toward him with remarkable velocity, leaving behind shockwaves in her path. She threw a powerful straight right at Rui.
Rui’s eyes narrowed as he intercepted the attack with his palm, going with the attack, while simultaneously executing the Reverberating Lance technique with his back leg. As her attack moved forward, pushing his increasingly resistant palm, Rui pushed himself downwards with her attack.
RUMBLE
The ground shook as Rui’s back leg successfully permeated all of the impact deep into the ground.
Squire Casen’s eyes widened as she felt the energy and impact of her strike being harmlessly dispelled away. It was a bizarre sensation, she threw all her power into the strike, yet from the moment Rui touched it, she felt her attack becoming weaker and weaker.
It was only now that she understood what Rui had been working on for more than half a year!