The Martial Unity

“They are… well, interesting, I suppose.” Headmaster Aronian smiled wryly as he plucked out a file from a drawer and handed it to Rui. “Go over them in your own time.”

Rui nodded as he received the file.

“And with that, I have conveyed all that I wished to. You may go if you have nothing you wish to convey.” Headmaster Aronian told him.

Rui nodded. “Thank you, Headmaster.” He said, bowing deeply, before turning around and leaving.

Once he reached his dorm room, he immediately locked himself inside as he sat down, opening the file. The file had copies of commission applications that the clienteles who commissioned him had submitted as well as mission bills created for each of them.

He skimmed through them, reading them each briefly. His facial expressions morphed rapidly as he skimmed through.

Many of the personal commissions in the file were the norm; what one would expect. Bodyguard missions of different types. A hunter-class mission or two here and there.

Yet what surprised him was the sheer number of miscellaneous commissions there were for him. Many of them were bizarre.

A few sought to commission him for representing them in unofficial underground and upper-class Apprentice-level fighting contests.

A connoisseur and collector of unique Martial Artists had commissioned him for his Martial Art.

Prominent Martial Families had commissioned him as a sparring partner for their Martial Apprentice descendents.

A news outlet in the town of Vargard had commissioned him for an interview.

A prominent Martial Family holding an event later on in the Martial Festival had commissioned him to participate in their event.

The Kandrian Institute of Sciences had commissioned him as a research subject, to study his Martial Art. This one was a shocking notion to him.

A Martial Art gear and uniform development corporation had commissioned him for an advertisement and endorsement of their brand!

Rui couldn’t help but be surprised when he saw these strange and abnormal commissions as he read into them in more detail. These were not the kind of commissions he was expecting when he opened the file.

He shook his head as he decided focus on one mission at a time.

He grabbed the first mission bill, glancing at the summary of the mission printed on the cover.

It was a bodyguard mission.

[Defense class: Bodyguard mission

Difficulty grade: 4

Target of protection: Bent Silihillas

Specified/estimated location/range of mission: Town of Vargard, Fastar Convention, 17th main, 15th cross.

Time period of mission: Twelve hours.

Mission commencement period: 39 th Winter.

Successful completion remuneration: 500 martial credits.

Commission clientele: Silihilas Corporation]

Rui raised an eyebrow at that reward. He couldn’t help but be surprised at that reward. The man was willing to pay a lot just have Rui be his bodyguard. What struck Rui as odd was the fact that the mission difficulty was a grade four. Meaning the evaluated probability of threat to his life was very low.

Five hundred credits for a grade four mission? That was severely overpriced. What was the point of hiring a grade seven Martial Apprentice like Rui for a grade four mission?

Rui was beginning to suspect that he was being hired only to flex.

The mission location was a convention of conglomerate leaders, Rui had no experience with such gathering, however it did seem like he was merely being hired to show off. Perhaps the convention was a snobby little rich people-meeting, where they all tried to out-flex each other.

This was especially the case when one of the conditions of the mission was performing the mission without his mask.

Rui immediately shook his head.

It was one thing to go maskless in a Martial competition event of peers who consented to a fair competition between each other that was being regulated by the Martial Academies, but he refused to reveal his identity to during a solo mission that could potentially make him new enemies who did not care about fairness and consent. That was just too dangerous.

Furthermore, the mission did not offer him any valuable experience that could help him grow as a Martial Artist. Anything below grade five was frankly too paltry for his current level of power. He wanted a mission that could stimulate him, and this simply wasn’t it.

He immediately tossed the mission bill aside.

The other bodyguard missions were also of a similar nature, where he was clearly being treated as a trophy to be showed off to others of a certain community or class, rather than as a Martial Artist who was being paid to protect them.

His status as the finalist in the prestigious Martial Contest would earn them a lot of social points, he imagined. The other representatives of the Martial Contest probably didn’t receive such offers since they were already part of their own Martial Family and would not affiliate with an external entity, but he could sense that people were trying to rope him in to some degree because he had no real ties with any individual or entity in the upper echelons of society.

He immediately tossed all of those aside, he had no interest in indulging their vanity. Frankly, there wasn’t much that they could offer him that genuinely interested him.

Money? Becoming rich was not his goal.

Resources for growing stronger? The Martial Union far surpassed them in regards to the resources they offered to Martial Artists. Only the Royal Kandrian Family could rival them in that regard.

Social status? Again, he didn’t care.

He only wanted to develop his Martial Art and traverse his Martial path.

He skimmed through the hunter missions, intrigued. They were different. Half of them were from private individuals and other half was from the Ministry of Environment and Ecology. They were centered around a variety of different types of missions; reconnaissance, procurement of resources, extermination etc.

He decided to accept all of them, they were more lowkey and gave him real valuable experience that the vanity missions did not.

Putting them aside, he glanced at the set of mission bills of miscellaneous missions.