The Martial Unity

The two of them had settled on the basics of their objectives that meeting before Rui returned back to the town of Hajin quickly.

He had a lot of work to do.

('I need to become more intimately familiar with the threats innate to the dungeon,') Rui noted.

He had memorized all the information about the various species that inhabited the floors of the dungeon. What he needed to do was intimately familiarize himself with them, their strengths and weaknesses, among other things.

According to the information that the Martial Union had provided him, there were many powerful species living in the Shionel dungeon. There were triple-tusked catoblepas, a species that resembled buffalo that had fused with a dinosaur, warthog, and hippo. They were aggressive herbivorous creatures that aggressively attacked any threat.

Their threat level was evaluated to be low-grade Squire level at most.

However, their numbers made them difficult to deal with. According to the information provided by the Martial Union, many a Martial Squire had fallen to their rampages due to an underestimation of them.

One needed to deal with them with finesse rather than brute force unless one possessed a huge number of Martial Artists on one's side.

One of the species of the upper floors of the dungeon was the longfeather cinnamy bird species. These creatures tended to have a wingspan that was more than two meters long and were capable of rapid and swift flight thanks to it. They could even manipulate the air currents to optimize their flight with their breathing in what eerily resembled a breathing technique.

The problem was that these creatures were now much stronger than their previous baseline forms due to having consumed a lot of the esoteric substances making their way into the blood of the animals present through the food chain.

What that meant was that Rui did not possess a good understanding of what was worth undertaking just yet by looking into the scholarly literature regarding these species, at most, he would understand what the baseline performance of the monsters in the Shionel Dungeon would be.

Most of the intelligence that the Martial Union provided was first-hand intelligence gathered by the internal Martial Squires of the Martial Union that were deployed to the Shionel Dungeon.

These Martial Squires had fought the monsters of the Shionel Dungeon personally and had collected valuable information on their physical parameters, their lethality, and their approach to combat.

Rui had an opportunity to study the available data and chalk out solutions for them.

Thankfully, it wasn't as though each floor of the dungeon had its own brand new species, thankfully, that would be truly troublesome and would most likely stall the exploration of the dungeon by several extra years.

That made his job of scouting the dangers of the dungeon easier since he had a lot less data to sift through to get what he needed.

He was doing this not only because it was better to be prepared than not to be, but also because it would be relevant to his next training phase and the next set of technology projects that he would be setting out to work on.

Both Kane and himself had come to the agreement that they were unequipped to take on the Shionel Dungeon themselves at the moment. Thus they had both agreed to work on getting stronger so that they were more prepared to succeed in their endeavor and able to handle the risks.

Kane's path forward was relatively simple. He was an evasive maneuvering specialist and used any and everything that could allow him to evade better, this included stealth. At the moment, the best thing he could offer was stealth. It was true that he had the VOID Step technique, as well as other stealth-oriented techniques to aid with his stealth, however, it was not invincible. Rui could still sense him, roughly to the degree that he had been able to sense him in their fight in the preliminary contest more than five years ago.

Of course, Rui was special. His mind was vastly superior to every other Martial Artist, he possessed a cognition that was great enough to be able to resist Kane's misdirection in addition to possessing three sensory techniques.

However, it was possible that there would be other Martial Artists that could sense Kane. He was not absolutely imperceptible even when this was taken into consideration.

('For example, if there is someone who has mastered the All-Seeing Eye,') Rui noted.

This was the only grade-ten sensory technique that he had ever come across to this day. He had yet to meet anyone who had mastered it, the Martial Union did not sell such information, after all.

Still, he would be a fool to assume that that was the one and only grade-ten sensory technique in existence that they could run to. Just how many countries were partaking in the Shionel dungeon exploration and raid?

Who knows what kind of techniques might come about?

Of course, Rui was not too worried, even if there was a Martial Squire who possessed the ability to sense Kane, it wasn't that big a deal. Considering how utterly titanic the Shionel Dungeon was in its size, the odds of Rui and Kane running into them were minuscule.

Kane's stealth was the key to mitigating their inability to confront too many monsters or hostile Martial Squire forces. Rui would have very little confidence in their ability to be the first to plunder and explore the rest of the dungeon without Kane.

Still, there were other issues that Kane's stealth would not be to overcome, he couldn't possibly do everything himself.

('I can take it upon myself to overcome these issues,') Rui nodded.

He intended to on three more projects. This was his absolute limit to accomplish in a standard training phase. He needed to make sure that each of the techniques that he would be developing would contribute to his Martial Art while staying true to his Martial Path and having high synergy, while also being geared to overcoming the barriers and hurdles of the Shionel dungeon.