The Martial Unity

Rui was taking a bit of a gamble with his bold brashness, but he knew that it would be impossible to earn the respect and fear needed for the guildmaster to take him seriously. The latter was a tremendously powerful man with power, authority, wealth, and influence that far surpassed anything Rui could deal with in ordinary circumstances.

And they both knew that.

That was why Rui had decided that he needed to convey without a shred of doubt that this wasn't one of those circumstances. Rui would not tolerate being pushed around unduly, or being threatened.

Still, he put on a cool facade, but even his heart skipped a beat when the ground started trembling. He realized that he had underestimated how powerful the Shionel Dungeon was. Had he maintained for even half a second more, a calamity might have occurred.

"H…"

"Hm?" He focused on the guildmaster again with furrowed eyebrows.

"Haha… HAHAHA," The man started guffawing.

That made Rui quite nervous. He had expected that the man would grow unnerved, and would instantly put on a pleasant salesman facade to appease Rui. But instead, he not only seemed unperturbed but also emboldened.

"It's been a while since someone has had the balls to threaten me," He began speaking more informally as his toothy grin widened. He stared at Rui with an intense fixation reflecting in his bloodshot eyes.

Rui's eyes widened as he felt his nerves tingling.

('This man… is able to pressure me?')

He wasn't even physically present in the same room, he was supposed to be just a normal human that Rui eviscerate with ease. Yet that did not translate into the unshakeable confidence that Rui had with other humans, for some reason.

"I have to say, I'm impressed," He settled down as he regained the composure that he momentarily lost. "Rest assured, brave Squire, I have no intention of enslaving you. Instead, I am quite intrigued at the prospect of cooperating with you. Still…"

His eyes narrowed. "There are several issues that need to be addressed. First, your identity. That little trick earlier is noteworthy, but it cannot help you clear dungeons as spectacularly well as you claim you can. Are you the individual who cleared the second floor of the Shionel Dungeon?"

Rui replied by dumping the huge bags of bloodfury rabbit tail-ends on the table. "As you can see, I have collected proof for each rabbit I killed. You can conduct tests and verify that the time of death of the tissue is around the same as the time of death of the corpses, and I'm sure the missing tails have been noticed too."

Guildmaster Bradt had clearly expected something of this sort, he did not show any immediate reactions to the matter.

"I understand that this isn't necessarily absolute proof. Though I'm sure it is compelling given the timeline that you have, no doubt, constructed as well as the fact that I even bothered going through such a tedious task at all," Rui shrugged. "Though I can always provide greater corroborating proof in the future if need be. This should not be a contentious issue, I'm sure."

"You're correct," He simply stated. "Still, the fact that you went out of your way to gather this evidence when clearing the second floor, means that you had planned this well ahead of time, correct?"

Rui shrugged, not replying.

"Well, putting that aside," He said, seeing as Rui was not willing to talk about this matter. "I want to confirm the map."

Rui could feel that he had grown a lot more intense and serious regarding this matter. If Rui messed up in this particular regard, he would not laugh it off like when Rui pulled off that bold move earlier.

Rui pulled out three books and he tossed them onto the table. The Martial Squires in the room moved forward as they opened the various books, unfolding the pages as they each formed large maps that mapped the surface level of the dungeon and the vicinity of the first floor and second floors rather accurately and in a detailed matter.

The guildmaster's eyes widened as he beheld remarkably detailed and precise maps. The tunnels were drawn to detail, showing their varying and fluctuating diameters and directions.

The cardinal directions on the map allowed the man to know which dungeon was facing which direction, something that was almost impossible to do due to compasses not functioning properly inside the dungeon.

"This…" Guildmaster Bradt was unable to hide his greed and amazement. "… Is far more detailed and precise than I was expecting while also abiding by the norms of the field cartography, I can see that you're someone who is adept at cartography."

Rui did not respond to that, it was not as simple as he made it out to be since he was using his remarkable mental faculties to skip half of the work that came with drawing maps. Still, he had no intention of revealing that to the guildmaster.

"Still," he turned to Rui, staring at him with sharp eyes. "There is no proof these are accurate,"

Rui chuckled out loud. "The only way to confirm for a fact that a map is genuinely accurate is to verify it firsthand. You can keep those maps as a token of my sincerity. They constitute about two percent of the Shionel Dungeon, although it did take me quite a long time before I was able to make those, only then did I proceed to actually clear the second floor."

That was a lie, and quite the believable one. He wanted Guildmaster Patrick to believe that he had been working on this particular venture for an extended period of time in the Shionel Confederation. This would throw off the investigation that Guildmaster Bradt would inevitably begin on finding out Rui's true identity. Regardless of his evaluation of Rui's competencies, he was still better off knowing the true identity of the person he was making such a significant deal with, than not.

***

Author's note:

Dear tier non-priv readers, I apologize for the delay in chapters that occurred due to a WN priv glitch that caused tier 3 priv to require 8 more chapters against my wishes. I spent the 1st and 2nd of June filling tier 3 priv up. I will publish 6 extra chapters this month to compensate, so you will get what you paid for.

Apologies for the inconvenience again, and than you for your support. :)