He and Kane casually chatted while they returned back to where Rui was to scout, looking for the final remaining section of the twelfth floor. Rui was glad that they had decided to split up, this operation would have been a lot harder if everyone stuck to each other like glue. Even though Rui was clever enough to still think of ways, it would be truly difficult, even for him.
Thankfully, the sensory jamming and the loss of the natural sense of direction in the Shionel Dungeon made his job easier, since he could even say ‘Oh, I completely lost my sense of direction and got lost’ and it would be extremely believable.
Such a thing was a very regular occurrence in the Shionel Dungeon, after all. Furthermore, it would be very believable considering Rui was only a young B-rank Martial Squire who had spent only under four years in the Squire Realm, thus his natural senses would undoubtedly be weaker than that of the others.
Most animals relied on the magnetic field of the planet to gain some basic foundation for a sense of direction. This phenomenon was known as magnetoreception and was a very well-documented phenomenon back on Earth. It was by this very sense that animals were able to migrate accurately across the entire world without ever losing their direction, following the same migration routes year after year.𝒪𝒱xt.𝑐𝓞𝗆
Normal humans did not possess magnetoreception to any meaningful degree, but the same could not be said for Martial Artists.
However, in the Shionel Dungeon, even this magnetoreception sense was completely jammed. It was why the monsters in the dungeon lost their way and ended up getting lost in the maze of tunnels of the Shionel Dungeon. It was why many Martial Squires had gone missing since entering the Shionel Dungeon despite their being pre-established paths that were marked. Their sense of direction had been completely sabotaged, causing them to take completely different paths than the specified directions, or diverge largely in large broad tunnels where their sabotaged sense of direction made them make just one error in the choice of tunnels they chose to go.
Eventually, it was time to get back to the group.
“Be sure to keep the Void Step active at all times, without fail, got it?” Rui stressed the importance of this.
If Kane just randomly revealed himself out of the blue, it would ruin everything!
“Yeah yeah, I know, don’t baby me Rui,” He grumbled.
“Sorry about that, it’s just particularly important,” He replied apologetically.
He was not afraid that the Martial Squires would be able to sense Kane. Sensing Kane was something only a small proportion of Martial Squires could do outside of the Shionel Dungeon, but it would be absolutely impossible for almost anybody barring Rui to detect him inside the Shionel Dungeon.
That was why he stressed the importance of not making any mistakes since that was the only way his presence could possibly be revealed inside the dungeon.
“You’re late, Squire Quarrier,” Squire Fren blankly stated.
“Ah, sorry, I got a little lost on this floor,” Rui meekly replied. He deliberately wanted to paint himself as a little clumsy. Once Chairman Deacon read the report, his evaluation of Rui as a threat would most likely be lowered a bit.
And that was exactly what Rui was hoping for. He did not want to stand out a lot.
“Hmph,” Squire Darbun snorted, sneering at Rui. “This is why an incompetent weakling like you should not have joined the Voidhunters.”
Rui was about to respond when he suddenly froze. Something had happened.
Squire Fren was sharp enough to have caught that.
“What happened?” She asked, peering at him with her eyes.
“Nothing at all,” Rui managed to squeeze out. But his attention was diverted elsewhere.
(‘Is that big group of Martial Squires heading towards us?’) Rui frowned as his Riemannian Echo had just picked up a large group of Martial Squires, with fifty percent more Martial Squires than their own group moving toward their group specifically, despite just having entered the dungeon.
This kind of trajectory was either a large coincidence or…
(‘Or they’re specifically moving towards us,’) Rui grew increasingly tense.
He was not a fool, no group of Martial Squires moved in this manner towards another intentionally if their intentions were not malicious.
Rui tracked the group of Martial Squires moving towards them with a growing tingling sensation across his nerves. Even his suppressed Primordial instinct was sensing grave danger.
(‘Damn it is an attack,’) He cursed.
But who? Why would anyone randomly attack a group of sixteen Martial Squires? How were they aware of their location? Did they have an excellent grade-ten sensory Martial Squire who could at the very least sense their presence partially? Or…
(‘They had intelligence on us ahead of time,’) Rui cursed. (‘That would explain it, that means there is an actual data leak to someone who really does not like Chairman Deacon and is opposed to them, and has the power to dispatch twenty-four Martial Squires on short notice.
There was one name at the top of the suspect list that stood out to him.
(‘Could it be Gui- No wait! The identity doesn’t matter right now! I need to fucking survive,’)
There was about half a minute’s worth of time before the two groups collided. Normally this would be far too little time to make a decision. Martial Squires did not possess accelerated conscious thought outside of combat-related cognition and thought processes. Yet Rui’s mind far surpassed human limits even without the evolution that came with being a Martial Squire.
His pupils dilated as his mind furiously began processing his circumstances.
(‘The primary objective is Kane’s and my survival,’) Rui instantly established. (‘The secondary objective is to ensure our identities are not revealed.’)
Against twenty-four Martial Squires, Rui had absolutely no grand ambitions of fighting them head-on and winning. As long as he survived and their identities were not revealed, he would consider it a big win.