The Martial Unity

Rui sighed to himself in relief, he was quite happy that he didn't need to injure the hippogriff while completing his mission. Thankfully, he nailed the timing and was able to latch onto it in a position where it was unable to do anything about him. The timing he had managed to nail with a predictive model he had created for it. He had exclusively used the predictive model alone without the adaptive model since the latter was not very reliable against non-human opponents.

Something he had yet to fix.

('It's not like I've been using the VOID algorithm much recently.') He sighed. The last time he had used it was against Kyrie in their spar, but it had been quite a while since he used it on a mission. It couldn't be helped, after all, his opponents were too weak for him to employ his strongest weapon. So far, he had only fought groups of high-tier Martial Apprentices.

He sighed. Only once he got to a higher grade would he undertake missions that featured actual Squire-level combat assets. Whether it be Martial Squires, potion-amped humans, or war weapons that could threaten even Martial Squires. All of it would come with grade four missions and above. That's why he was grinding through the easy missions quickly and perfectly, he would get to where he wanted to quicker that way.

He heard light chirps as the little hippogriffs tried waking their mother up, distressed. Rui sighed, putting on a mind mask of positivity as he approached them.

"Hey, who do we have here?" He cooed at them as warmly and non-threateningly as he could, trying to calm them down.

He only needed to keep them there until the team arrived. Thankfully, it wasn't long before the team from the Ministry of Environment and Ecology arrived. Eight men had trudged traveled up the mountain in motorized carriages, carrying some equipment with them.

"Squire Falken?"

"That's me." Rui nodded. "What's going to happen to the hippogriffs?"

"Oh, they'll be nursed, taken care of, and then habituated when deemed ready." The officer told him as they began strapping up the hippogriff and putting the cubs into crates. Rui was satisfied with the care they were handling the hippogriffs with, so he hit the mission completion button before finally leaving.

He was quite satisfied with the way he had completed the mission. The hippogriffs were safe and unscathed, thus the evaluation of the completion of his mission should be quite high.

He sighed.

While completing a good mission was satisfying, he was starting to grow quite unsatisfied with the lack of real stimulating combat. The aerial clash with the hippogriff was the closest thing to a challenge ever since he had begun his streak of missions. Grade three missions simply weren't stimulating enough. He couldn't wait to engage in actual Squire-level combat.

So far, he had finished three grade-three missions exceedingly well. He estimated there weren't too many more he would need to finish before he got upgraded to grade four as a Martial Artist. He intended to grind past them to reach higher grades as soon as he could.

It was a little tiring, without a doubt. Sometimes he wondered if sparring against other Martial Squires as he did with Kyrie was a better alternative than trying to seek real-life combat but he already knew it wasn't. No matter how intense sparring got, it could not replace actual combat in the field against hostile forces.

There was a different kind of pressure that one experienced when one fought a battle with high stakes, if he didn't routinely expose himself to that pressure and temper his mind under that weight, he would become increasingly rustier as time passed, and his actual combat ability would decrease.

There were several things that he wasn't willing to compromise on, and his actual effectiveness in real combat was one of them. However, it wasn't just about combat effectiveness, it was also about his Martial Path. He would not be able to go much deeper down his Martial Path if he did not have real combat experience.

He sighed. ('Just need to keep grinding.')

He traveled through the air as fast as he could towards the Mantian region and the town of Hajin. He intended to reach the town immediately and undertake another mission as soon as he could. A few hours passed and he soon enough reached the Martial Union branch.

He quickly passed the security after showing them his ID and mission bill before completing the post-mission protocols such as writing statements and a report. Once he was done with the annoying paperwork, he headed straight over to the mission library.

('I still have one more mission in me before I'll need to head home and catch some rest.') He sighed. ('Better make it good.')

He went right in towards the offense class section, skimming through the available missions. He ran into an interesting mission rather early on.

[Offense class mission: Destruction

Client: Fushin Hunfer

Grade: three

Destruction target: Hlorn: Squire-grade siege weapon.

Target location: Fort Zurtun

Remuneration: 16,000 Martial credits / six hundred and eight gold coins

Mission summary: The target of destruction is the Hlorn, a Squire-grade siege weapon that is capable of unleashing as much damage on a human settlement or group as a higher-grade Martial Squire can. The client of the mission would like to commission the destruction of the weapon, under specific circumstances. The degree of destruction must be to ensure that light repairs cannot repair the functionality of the weapon. ]

('Interesting...') Rui's eyes lit up with interest. Destruction of an object owned or possessed by another individual counted as an offense-class mission as opposed to manual labor as it was an act of aggression to the owner of said possession. If the Hlorn weapon did not belong to anybody, then the mission would not have been classified under the offense class.

Rui immediately took the mission bill to the register counter to register it to his name.