The Martial Unity

Rui’s own preparations were not necessarily done though, his prior measures were related to their coordination and to their work. Now he had his own preparations to make.

(‘I need to gather information on the other Voidhunters,’) he noted to himself.

His Martial Path was adaptive evolution. He gathered all kinds of information on his opponents through all means, including extra-combat means. He did not necessarily need to fight them to be able to develop an adapted anti-fighting style to take them down. As long as he had enough information, it was possible.

As for how he was going to procure all that information?

“I’d like to purchase all the combat information on all fifteen of these Martial Squires,” Rui stated to an employee in the information transaction section as he handed her a list of names

He simply was going to buy it straightforwardly as Rui Quarrier. He didn’t need to use subterfuge, since learning about the people that he was going to be working on a dangerous mission and going to be trusting to a certain extent was perfectly reasonable, if uncommon. But there was no room for there to be any suspicion of him being the Voider based on this alone.

Thus, he needed to own it and go ahead with making such a purchase. After all, in the eyes of others, if he was the Voider, would he truly be so crude in his attempt to learn more about his enemies? It was quite unlikely.

“There you go sir, it will cost you about five thousand gold,”

Rui winced slightly as he paid up.

He lifted the large box of documents, carrying it home before studying it privately, opening the first document.

[Squire Fren Burenha]

“Hmmm…” Rui’s eyes narrowed.

Squire Fren was an S-rank adventurer and was the leader of the S-rank party who had discovered that the second floor of the Shionel Dungeon had been cleared. Now she had joined the Voidhunters to hunt him down. He wondered if she held a grudge against him for clearing the second floor when it was clear from that incident that she had wanted to be the one to claim that fame.

Regardless, she was extremely strong. Rui had felt it even though she tried restraining her aura.

It was heavy.

It possessed a weight that simply could not be hidden. When he looked at her, he felt just the tiniest spark of what he sensed from the Martial Seniors when they fought on Vilun Island.

(‘I can’t beat her as I am now,’) Rui shook his head.

Her Martial Art, the Double Fist Binding Serpent Style was a grappling Martial Art meant to subjugate extremely powerful beings and beasts. Her Martial Path was Joint Submission. A Martial Path that focused on immobilizing their targets by putting them in positions where resisting would stress and hurt their own joints.

Joints were almost universally the weakest points of animals and monsters possessing joints. Thus any position where a person was forced to apply force in a way that stressed their own joints would cause them to experience strain in their joints, and be unable to resist at all without dislocating it.

“Interesting,” He mused as he went through the intelligence on her quite thoroughly.

Although joint-hold submissions were a very universal form of submissions back on Earth being featured in Aikido, Judo, Sambo, and even Shoot Wrestling, she had a very distinct full-body type submission joint-holds that reminded Rui of one style in particular.

“Brazilian Jiu-Jitsu,” He murmured.

He could even understand why her Martial Art seemed to feature a whole lot of full-body holds.

“She can’t put large beasts into submission with just an arm or two, she needs to apply her whole body,” Rui realized.

She specialized in subjugating powerful Squire-level beasts that simply could not be subjugated through any other means. He could see why she had chosen to enter the dungeon with a party rather than by herself.

“She’s not suited having to take on a large number of monsters that need to be killed rather than subjugated,” He concluded.

Of course, that did not mean she was useless, far from it. She was still more valuable than any grade-eight and most grade-nine Martial Squires. With her party, they could easily take down Squire-level monsters, and even beasts that surpassed the limits of the Squire Realm as far as physical parameters went!

While she alone could not win, with her party Saberstrike, she could definitely be able to kill one as long as she was careful.

(‘I can’t beat her as I am now,’) Rui sighed, shaking his head. He held confidence in himself, but even he was not arrogant enough to believe that his Flowing Void Style could take down a grade-ten Martial Squire. There was far too much of a gap between them. If she was just one grade, maybe even two grades above him, he would be a lot more confident with good preparation, but now if she was literally four grades above him.

He shook his head, putting the matter aside, as he quickly inputted her data into his Mind Palace, rapidly creating an incomplete predictive model regardless.

The goal of this was not to fight her but to be able to predict her movements. He had already memorized as much data on all fifteen of them when they gathered to meet Chairman Deacon and storing it in his Mind Palace, that in conjugation with this allowed him to create quite the imperfect and rough predictive models, but at the very least he would see any abrupt changes coming ahead of time and not be caught off-guard by any strange movements that could potentially ruin his plans.

He did the same for the others while also studying their Martial Art and adding all details surrounding it to his Mind Palace. These Martial Squires, while not as impressive as Squire Fren, were still highly relevant threats that he needed to keep an eye on as well when he entered the dungeon.