The Martial Unity

The Virodhabhasa Martial Festival was impending, and it could be sensed.

The Seonmun Church town was a highly religiously-inclined location in the first place, but that vibe was magnified significantly, and only grew more by the day as the Martial Festival rolled around.

The town had begun the major preparations for the Virodhabhasa Martial Festival, and the festive atmosphere that had spread across the town was so palpable that one could smell it even if one closed their eyes. It was an incredible morale boost for the entirety of the town.

It was as though the town's infrastructure as a whole was adjusting and making way for the massive festival that was coming soon.

Unlike most festivals around the continent, the greatest attraction was not the regular kind of festivities that occurred in normal festivals. Decorations, and various artforms like paintings, dance, music, and food were present, but they were not the central focus.

No.

A Martial Festival was centered around Martial Art.

Various platforms and arenas had been built across the entirety of the town for the sole purpose 0f Martial Art demonstrations. While Martial Art was purposed for conflict, it was possible to utilize it as a unique art form without too much difficulty. The church town became increasingly busier and denser by the passing day as the town greeted an immense influx of tourists from outside of the region.

The region was hard to penetrate due to the topography, but it was easy enough to surmount for people with the means and wealth.

Given that this festival was only held once every two years, it was enough for the upper class of society to expend some wealth to go out of their way to partake in this festival. The Virodhabhasa Faith while large and powerful deliberately maintained an open and welcoming stance to outsiders, which made it an alluring place for vacations and things of that sort.

"Everybody sure is going all out," Rui remarked from atop an elevated terrace.

"It is an occasion that does not come frequently, after all," Master Deivon replied with a smile. "It is an important week for us, so we go all out."

"The Martial Contest will be held during the second half of the festival, correct?" Rui asked.

"Indeed," The man nodded. "I hope you have familiarized yourself with all the rules and norms of the contest. Make sure you are aware of everything that needs to be known."

"I have done just that,"

Rui did indeed look into the format contest recently. He had been quite curious about how the contest would be conducted, and exactly how the winners would be decided.

After all, the Martial Contest needed to filter through hundreds of thousands of Martial Squires throughout the entire continent!

That was an absurdly large number. Just how in the world did they plan to extract a winner out of this immense population?

Well, actually, the manner in which they did was quite reasonable, all things considered. The most convenient part was that they got to filter out the top one percent of the entire population through the preliminary contest of each town.

This was where things became rough as far as Rui was concerned. The Martial Contest was confined to the Martial festival, which meant that it could not take too much time to complete. Nor could it be too tedious since there was an element of entertainment as much as it was meant to be a pure meritocratic procedure. The event was funded by a portion of the pay-per-view spectator revenue that the event would earn.

They could not have a standard elimination tournament since that would take far too long with the sheer number of Martial Squires participating in the preliminary contest of each town.

Thus cruder and less accurate means had to be employed in the interest of time.

Rui actually physically heaved a heavy sigh when he recalled the means of electing the town representative of the town.

A royal rumble featuring all of the participating Martial Squires. This was something that he did not choose, but could not avoid.

It was such an incredibly crude way of choosing a victor that Rui highly doubted that the accuracy of the results exceeded thirty percent. The sheer number of variables that skew victory away from the actual strongest Martial Squire was too high. It was pure entertainment and could hardly be considered a genuinely rigorous evaluation of the Martial Artists in question.

On the other hand, it was the quickest way to extract a winner out of all the participating Martial Squires of each town, and also the cheapest way, not to mention the most thrilling and exciting format to watch.

This way, many other interests overtook the interest of accuracy.

However, that wasn't the worst part about it.

"You probably don't know but…" Master Deivon began.

"I know," Rui sighed. "I have a high profile in this town even with an alias and a mask. I will be a target."

Martial Squires weren't stupid. The ability to evaluate threats was a basic instinct, intuition, and thought process that every Martial Squire possessed. Rui had already gained a reputation for his formidability when he accomplished things that Martial Squires weren't supposed to be able to accomplish, such as destroying training infrastructure that was supposed to be impervious to Martial Squires. Or managing to gain access to Senior-level training facilities due to Squire-level facilities being insufficient.

Master Deivon has done his very best to quell rumors, but alas, the nature of the system in place made that basically impossible. His status as a Martial Master wasn't able to help, it wasn't as though he could destroy information with a Master-level technique.

"It's not going to be easy," The Master remarked. "This format is already unfair to the strong since it gives the weak the opportunity to fight back with numbers by targetting the strong. But it's going to be especially unfair to you. The ambitious Martial Squires who wish to at least become the town representative will not sit back and fight you fairly."

"I am prepared," Rui narrowed his eyes, replying calmly.