The Martial Unity

"By the way, Kane told me that the two of you are planning on an outing to the Shionel Dungeon, though he also told me to keep it a secret," She told him. "I must admit that I'm rather frustrated at my inability to partake. Even if I finished my Squire habilitation at this very moment, I would be far too weak to even consider participating in the Shionel Dungeon exploration and plunder raid. Quite unfortunate, really."

Rui raised an eyebrow. He didn't know Kane was close enough to her that he would confide that in her. It seems that their relationship was going better than he had expected.

The two had always bickered back when they were all in the academy. Yet despite that, Rui felt that they always had an affinity for each other.

"He told you that, did he?" Rui smirked. "Heh."

"My, what is that supposed to mean?" She asked with a raised eyebrow.

"Not much… I guess he must really trust you," Rui smiled. "The two of you must have a close relationship."

"We do not," She plainly stated.

"Is that so, it seems I'm mistaken then," He smirked even more. "Not that it's a problem of any sort, kids like yourselves ought to get along."

"I'm older than you," Her eyebrows furrowed.

"Ah right," Rui smiled wryly. "Still, don't mind me. It's just a nice thing to see."

"What is?"

"You know, his intimate trust in you…"

"Listen here you. First of all, we don't…"

Rui laughed as she grilled him for it. Her exaggerated response only made her look more suspicious. No one would want to deny something this benign if it wasn't true.

Half an hour, later, he managed to end the conversation, laughing all the way.

"Alright, I need to get to work," He smiled.

The three projects Eyespy, Monster Spray, and Keep Up With Kane were set in stone. He felt rather depressed looking at their names, but his creativity sucked when it came to things like this.

He began with the first one.

('The intelligence of the Martial Union makes it clear that the Shionel Dungeon disrupts and jams flow of energy in general,') Rui quickly analyzed all of it.

Techniques like Seismic Mapping and Tempestuous Feel relied on currents and vibrations across the ground to infer information on their surroundings. This would naturally be quite suppressed if the Shionel Dungeon did not allow for kinetic energy to flow through its structure in the form of waves through the air or the ground.

Furthermore, techniques that involve perceiving temperature have also been reported to be suppressed, in addition to normal vision as well. From that Rui could infer that the Shionel Dungeon's jamming of energy flow was not limited to just kinetic vibrations, but also included radiation.

These covered an overwhelming majority of techniques. Only techniques that explicitly relied on sensing matter such as the sense of smell were less affected.

('Smell lacks the precision and accuracy at the Squire level to navigate the entirety of the Shionel Dungeon, unfortunately,') Rui sighed.

This made things really rough, there wasn't a single sensory technique that he had ever come across that did not rely on perceiving some form of phenomena that ultimately involved the flow of energy between the user of the sensory technique and the object being sensed by that technique.

It was almost as though the Shionel Dungeon was the very antithesis of sensing itself. He was encountering a very difficult dilemma.

There were almost no sensory mechanisms and principles that he could use to sense a large amount of area.

('I bet Martial Artists with immensely powerful smell and taste senses are probably being heavily sought after in the dungeon,') Rui noted.

However, he did not think that these Martial Artists possessed the ability to sense vast chunks of the dungeon by merely sense and smell. That was probably a feat that could not be achieved at the Squire level.

('Maybe there is some obscure grade-ten smelling technique out there that maybe one Martial Squire in the modern era has managed to master, but that individual alone is not going to be able to influence the exploration and raid rate of the entire dungeon by themselves,')

What he needed was something new that utilized his knowledge and mental ability to be able to sense despite the sensory jamming effects of the Shionel Dungeon.

('If it jams energy flow then… perhaps I need a way of accessing information of my target without a flow of energy from my target and myself,') Rui mused. ('At the very least, there can't be a direct flow of energy.')

Suddenly, Rui's eyes widened as an interesting idea popped into his mind. A way that, if successful, could hypothetically allow him to sense the entire layout of the Shionel Dungeon within a certain range.

Yet his vigor immediately cooled down when he realized that his idea was probably far too crazy, it was frankly ridiculous.

('All mass and energy warp space-time according to the General Theory of Relativity… if there existed a way to detect the warps in space… then maybe I could use that to read the layout of a large chunk of the Shionel Dungeon.') Rui wasn't too enthusiastic about this idea.

It seemed too insane, even for the Martial Art techniques of this world. What he was attempting to do was something that even technology back on Earth had not yet accomplished. However, he knew that this principle was used in astronomy.

If… he had no idea how, but if he could somehow find a way to sense the curvature of space…

('It would be game-changing, frankly,') Rui knew that.

It would probably be one of the most revolutionary sensory techniques in the Squire Realm. He highly doubted that any other Martial Squire across the entire continent could possibly have such a technique.

('There's a good reason for that, however,') Rui mused. ('It is an insanely difficult challenge, one that I'm not going to find easy to overcome.