A few days passed, and not much had changed. At this point, Rui could only wait for news. They had done everything that had to, and now the ball was in the G’ak’arkan Tribe’s court. Rui just had to make sure that they were prepared for anything.
And he was when it did end up happening.
“Sir, a Martial Squire from the G’ak’arkan Tribe has arrived, announcing that Senior K’Mala of their tribe would be arriving at dusk,” An agent of the diplomatic team rushed into the diplomatic office, announcing to Rui.
“Well,” Rui stood up. “At least they had the courtesy to tell us ahead of time. Almost all of the preparations have already been prepared. Make sure they’re all ready.”
“Yes, sir,” The man nodded, before rushing away to do his job.
“You heard that, Zeyra, Stemple?” Rui raised an eyebrow at his two assistants.
“Yes, sir, we’ll ensure that we are ready by then,” They nodded.
“Good,”
And the settlement was thrown into a bit of a hurry as they made preparations to welcome for the first time.
(‘I’m just glad that the K’ulnen Tribe has not postponed this moment,’) Rui sighed.
It would have been a pain if they decided to go into an all-out war against the Martial Union. But unfortunately for them, they were far too busy trying not to get torn to shreds by the sharks in the geographic vicinity that smelled blood.
Thus, Rui could peacefully focus on receiving his guests.
pαndα`noνɐ1–сoМ They came precisely when dusk arrived.
Rui could sense a powerful Senior-level force approaching the Martial Union settlement at a slow pace, so as to not alarm them. She did not want to be blasted away with a powerful attack from Senior Ceeran if he interpreted a high-paced approach as a sign of an enemy trying to catch them all off-guard.
She even took the precautions of descending a good distance away from the entrance of the settlement, choosing to walk the rest of the distance.
“K’Mala,” Rui smiled. “Welcome to the Martial Union village.”
The G’ak’arkan Tribe did not have honorifics for Martial Artists, thus Rui had no choice but to call her directly by her singular name.
“Thank you,” She replied shortly, reaching her hand out toward Rui.
It was a gesture that was not of the G’ak’arkan Tribe, but she had learned that that was how the outsiders greeted each other.
Rui smiled appreciatively as he shook her hand, before gesturing her in.
Once they entered the village, her attention was drawn to the sheer alienness of what she was witnessing.
The outsiders did everything differently, after all.
Their buildings were entirely different from the huts made up of clay and stone that the G’ak’arkan Tribe had. This was the first time that she had realized just how different from the G’ak’arkan Tribe, no, all the tribes on this island were from the outsiders.
She didn’t even understand how they built such large structures that seemed so stable and solid. The structures that her tribe built were unstable beyond a certain height and size, thus they were forced to be constrained by their inability to build larger homes.
She looked at the various strange objects that they used that seemed to have a life of their own. They seemed capable of moving on their own and even giving out their own light.
She watched in wonder as the humans of this village sat inside some of them, and be carried around by them. It was a drastic culture shock and the first one that she had ever received in her entire life.
“We have arrived,” Rui smiled, gesturing inside a conference hall. “Let us hold our talks in here.”
“Now then,” Rui began once they were seated. “We are glad to have received you this quickly after our previous talk, K’Mala. Please begin however you would like.”
He left the stage open for her. After all, he truly had said everything that he needed to and everything that he could. Now it was time for the G’ak’arkan Tribe to issue their response.
She was silent for a few moments before opening her mouth and simply uttering:
“We accept the conditions of the trade that you have proposed.”
Those words were delightful to Rui, yet he didn’t allow them to impact his perfunctory smile one bit.
But inwardly, he was fisting the air yelling ‘WOOOHOOO!’𝚘𝑣xt.𝑐𝓞𝚖
“I have with me a list of the techniques that we are interested in trading with you,” She brought out a rough parchment of somewhat thick wood-like paper. “I am willing to trade this with you as long as you provide us with the techniques that you outsiders are interested in.”
“We accept that offer,” Rui nodded as Zeyra immediately plucked a document from her bag of files, handing it to Rui wordlessly.
“In this,” He gestured to the file he holding since the G’ak’arkan had no noun equivalent for the word file or document. “We have detailed the techniques that we desire in quite the detail, in the Vilun language, of course.”
The two simultaneously exchanged their lists, before immediately going over the other’s.
Rui raised an eyebrow.
At the top of the list was a description of none other than the time he used the Void Pathfinder technique in his debut battle.
It wasn’t as though he hadn’t expected this. He would be a fool not to expect them to want the technique that allowed him to maintain his facade of being a high-grade Martial Squire. Not that they knew that part.
Still, he didn’t expect that it would be at the top of the list. That was, well, an honor in a way. That meant that despite the presence of so many long-range oriented Martial Artists, his Pathfinder technique still somehow managed to steal the spotlight from them all. This included Senior Ceeran, it seemed. His trajectory manipulation techniques were very next on the list, also earning the interest and greed of the Martial Artists of the G’ak’arkan Tribe.