The Martial Unity

The only outsiders that could set foot within the Panamic Martial Federation were Martial Artists, and the only Martial Artists that Emperor Rael could trust to undertake such an immensely important mission aside from the Martial Sages of the Martial Union were Sage Sayfeel and Rui.

The former’s existence was an absolute secret that could not be divulged. Thus, Rui was the only one he could turn to.

In fact, although Emperor Rael hadn’t said it, Rui knew that he had given him the easiest Sage recruitment mission out of all. An able Martial Sage was far more difficult to impress and was far too dangerous for Rui compared to a fully crippled Martial Sage.

“Oh well…” He shrugged. “Time to break a law or two.”

It was rather silly when he thought of the underlying reason why he had come to the conclusion that he needed to go through such an extreme solution. Normally, not being able to meet a recruitment target was not cause to become a criminal.

The sane response in this circumstance was to simply give up and go back home and tell his father it couldn’t happen.

Yet, Rui simply couldn’t afford to do this, easy as it was.

Success was imperative to ensuring that the Kandrian Empire was able to gain the power it needed to withstand pressure from the rest of the world. Furthermore, it needed to happen quickly.

On top of that, the means by which he got the opportunity to convince her to join the Kandrian Empire and serve his father, the Emperor of Harmony, could not reduce the probability of her accepting his offer.

In other words, he couldn’t go too far. Pissing her off was not going to help him succeed. He just needed to ensure that he got in the same room as her. He also wanted to avoid incurring a sentence that was particularly hard or rough as he wasn’t interested in becoming a fugitive.

In other words, he just needed to get in front of her.

The reason that he was so confident was that he didn’t think she would be able to resist the allure of regaining her power. Once she was in front of him and faced with the opportunity to regain her power, she most likely would not do anything to delay the process.

Sentencing him to some form of imprisonment was something that would most certainly delay the regaining of her power. Thus, he could be certain that she was heavily disincentivized to go through such an option.

Based on the intelligence that his father had provided him, while Sage Kole was a person who had been deeply loyal to her former home, she merely joined the Panamic Martial Federation because she had nowhere else to go. His father noted in the intelligence package that there was an extremely low probability of Sage Kole having gained a deep loyalty to the organization, considering that she had historically stayed away from it, refusing to partake in its legislature.

In addition, it hadn’t been too long since the loss of control over her power. It had been merely twelve years, which was nothing by the standards of a Martial Sage. In other words, the probability that she had managed to get over her predicament was low.

All these pieces of information culminated together to give Rui greater certainty that Sage Kole would almost surely prioritize the recovery of her power over her sedentary duty as a High Martial Judge.

As long as he managed to convey his message to her before she completed her trial, he could compel her to declare him innocent so that they could head back to the Kandrian Empire to treat her.

In other words, his plan entailed breaking just significant enough of a law that would just be enough to get him in front of the sole judge whose Martial Realm was high enough to judge him so that he could essentially bribe her with what was probably the single greatest dream she harbored so that she could acquit him with the goal of hastening her recovery in the Kandrian Empire.

“It’s a crazy plan when I actually put it like that.”

However, he was confident in his evaluation and reasoning for each of the individual premises of such a crazy plan. “Now, to find the most appropriate way to get myself in front of her.”

Ideally, it should be the most inoffensive thing that he could possibly do to ensure that the well wasn’t poisoned when he did eventually stand in front of her.

“However, I should save executing this plan until after my briefing and Martial evaluation,” he mused knowingly. “It would not do for this plan to interfere with my briefing.”

He highly doubted that they would extend this courtesy to him if he broke the law and was put on trial first. However, while he did care about compelling Sage Kole to join the Kandrian Empire and swear loyalty to his father, he was also interested in learning everything that the Panamic Martial Federation had to convey to him.

Hopefully, the information that they were going to convey would aid him with his journey to the Sage Realm. However, he doubted it. Such a thing was too good to be true.

Thankfully, it wasn’t too long before he got a notification informing him of his slot for the Master-level briefing and evaluation. He quickly skimmed through it, mindlessly reading through the details.

[Esteemed Master Rui Quarrier Silas Kandria, your briefing and evaluation have been scheduled for tomorrow, the Sixteenth of Summer. The following internal Martial Masters shall conduct the briefing and evaluation.

Briefing: Master Gern.

Martial Embodiment evaluator: Master Felix.

Martial Profile evaluator: Master Jenile.

…]

It was an entirely ordinary message.

One that would not have stirred anyone who read it.

After all, it was a bunch of boring details for a bunch of boring matters.

Yet, Rui froze.

His eyes sharpened gravely as his expression grew severe.

The air grew frosty as his chilling gaze intensified, fixating on the message.

A single name.

[Combat threat evaluator: Master Uma.]

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