The Martial Unity

STEP

“Alright, this should be far enough,” Rui nodded. “Thanks, Kane.”

Kane nodded, before sighing. “You sure you have this all figured out right?”

“Of course I do,” Rui nodded. “I appreciate your concern, but trust me, I have spent an enormous amount of thought into this.”

Rui had been extremely busy since they cleared the second floor, doing things that Kane couldn’t even imagine.

He even had Kane help him a lot, even though his demands were quite shocking. Like when he asked Kane to deposit a letter crudely at the center of the table pushing everything aside and off after infiltrating the main branch office of the guildmaster of the nation. That was unnerving, but Kane had done a lot of such covert missions thanks to his Void Step technique. Even in Vilun Island, he had been tasked with infiltrating the G’ak’arkan Village to wiretap multiple locations despite the presence of a Martial Senior in the village, albeit sleeping.

Thus, it wasn’t that big of a deal for him to infiltrate the guildmaster’s office at all since there were only Martial Squires guarding the place.

What he didn’t understand was the necessity of such a measure when Rui could have simply mailed the envelope to the guildmaster’s office like a sane person. Still, he learned that Rui always had a reason for doing everything, so he simply decided to trust him with this matter.

“Still… Why the hell are you dressed in that manner?” Kane frowned. “It’s giving my senses a really strange and annoying sensation like in the dungeon.

Rui was completely clothed in a seemingly thick black cloth that made it seem like he was wearing four layers of clothes at the moment.

“It’s all part of the plan, my friend,” Rui said.

“Alright,” Kane shrugged. “Good luck,”

He vanished into thin air right before Rui’s eyes.

“Fuuu…” Rui sighed before looking at all the things that he had brought along with him.

To his left were several bags filled with the edges of the tails of the bloodfury rabbits that he had slaughtered. He had barely managed to get them all before the Saberstrike Party happened upon the scene. He managed to escape with as many as he could having sensed them when they were kilometers away for him. He could not be caught off-guard by any being inside the Shionel Dungeon, it was absolutely impossible.

The tail ends of the bloodfury rabbit corpses ought to have served as pretty solid proof of identity. Considering the estimated time of death through the autopsies and the arrival of the Saberstrike Party, it would be inconceivable for anyone else to have cut their tails off.

Furthermore, only the Voider would feel the need to do such a thing. No sane adventurer would go through such a thankless task without an extremely good reason. Although there were still some potential objections that Guildmaster Bradt Patrick could raise, it was still pretty compelling, as far as he was considered.

Besides, he highly doubted that Guildmaster Bradt would be particularly pedantic about this point. Frankly, with the map offer in place, he was mostly certain that Guildmaster Bradt no longer gave a damn about whether he was the Voider or not.

If he was the Voider, and he did possesses a map, then Guildmaster Bradt would be eager to deal with him.

If he wasn’t the Voider, and he did possess a map, then Guildmaster Bradt would still be quite eager to forge a deal with him.

“Still…” Rui glanced at the three books that he was carrying with him. Each book contained a folded map that formed its pages. Because the Shionel Dungeon was a three-dimensional structure, a single two-dimensional was inadequate to map it, since it could not account for the third dimension.

Thus, Rui had decided to create three maps, each map mapping the surface level of the Shionel Dungeon from two of the three dimensions. Together, they provided every ounce of information one could want from a map.

Rui had spent quite some effort in creating, and among the many preparations he had made back in the Kandrian Empire when he and Kane had yet to leave was gaining a good foundation in cartography. Cartography was not a discreet field and required many skillsets and an understanding of other fields to learn it. Thankfully, the presence of his power senses and the Mind Palace allowed him to dismiss several otherwise necessary skill sets in mastering it.

What he had particularly learned was the art of creating a map. With his learning cognition, it didn’t take long before he developed a sufficient foundation with that particular skill. His maps were plenty adequate as far as detail, proportion and scaling, accuracy and precision went.

And that was good enough.

Soon enough, it was time. Rui pulled out a pocket watch, glancing at the time when he noticed some movement at guild branch number thirty-two. Several high-grade Martial Squires wearing the Shionel Confederation’s emblem had arrived at the guild in a high-profile manner.

(‘That must be them,’) Rui nodded.

THUD

He leaped out of the dungeon cave he had been hiding in, landing on the ground before walking towards the large gate that separated the dungeon from the inner ring of Adventurer Town.

Despite being completely covered in a thick black fabric from head to toe, he didn’t draw too much attention. Surprisingly enough, that probably wasn’t the most ridiculous thing a Martial Artist had worn.

He entered the guild branch, before simply taking a seat in the guest, picking up a newspaper while skimming through its pages, even though his entire face was covered with the unusually thick black fabric. He drew strange looks, but he didn’t particularly care.

“Excuse me?” A powerful high-grade Martial Squire approached him, eying him sharply. “I believe you have scheduled an appointment in this guild branch, correct?”

“Oh, is it that time already?” Rui wondered aloud. “Time sure does fly.”

“Please come this way, we have made the appropriate preparations to receive you,”