The Martial Unity

Sky-walking was much slower than traveling on land for many reasons. The human body was anatomically evolved to travel on land, this fundamentally meant that they would travel through land faster than through any other means or medium.

This remained true even for Martial Squires even if their Martial bodies were evolved past humanity. Most Martial Squires retained the basic anatomy of human beings. The shape of the body, the number of limbs, bones, muscles, and the locations of these body parts maintained at least a resemblance with baseline human beings.

This meant that most Martial Squires also inherited humanity's inclination towards travel through land via their legs.

It couldn't be helped, every Martial Squire was once an ordinary human. Their entire Martial Art in the Apprentice Realm was centered around the human being that they were anatomically, then their Martial Body in the Squire Realm was optimized to cater to their Martial Art and their Martial Path.

This necessarily meant that the Martial Body could not be too diverged, evolutionarily speaking, from baseline humanity. Rui could not even imagine what kind of warped Martial Path would require such a thing to occur.

On top of that, based on the analytical and summary reports on the breakthrough to the Squire Realm gained from the research of the secret research facility in the Commonwealth Duchy of Vinfrana that Julian had prepared for him long when he was in the Apprentice Realm, Rui knew that it was impossible for the Martial Body to diverge too much from baseline humanity.

The breakthrough to the Squire Realm was an enhancement of the human body's specs the configuration of which was suited to the Martial Art of the Martial Apprentice in question.

Thus, an overwhelming majority of Martial Artists would always be more effective at traveling through land than through the air.

"Alright, we've finally reached land," Kane peered at the horizon, spotting land after nearly four hours of sky-walking. "Let's switch to land-walking when we get there."

Rui nodded.

He had no qualms about doing that. Sky-walking drew far too much attention in the first place, far more than he was comfortable given the sticky predicament that he was in.

"You're going to have to use Void Step to cover our approach," Rui told him. "I don't want people knowing that we even stepped foot into whatever that town is. That reduces the probability that we'll be tracked by anyone looking for us."

Kane nodded, putting his hand on Rui's shoulder.

The two of them disappeared into thin air as the technique took effect on all sentient and sapient beings in the vicinity.

Soon enough, they had reached their destination. A simple port town that went by the name of Garanga. Rui took note of the cooler temperature of the town that they had just arrived in. The town that they were in was much further north of the continent than the previous port town that they had presided in for the time being. The air was also a lot less humid, certainly a lot less humid than the air in the Umiana Trench.

The many people on the harbor wore denser and heavier clothes protecting their bodies as they went about their work.

The energy of the town was a lot more restricted than the dense and bustling town that they had previously stayed in, making it feel more bland and dull.

Not that it mattered to Rui and Kane, who had no intention of staying there.

It wasn't until they had entered a more remote place that they undid the technique when Rui made sure that there was no one tracking them.

A second later, they had already disappeared, leaving behind sonic booms in their wake as they traveled through land swiftly.

The following journey was one that was smooth, against all of Rui's expectations. They did take longer than a week to reach their location, but that was because of rest time, among other things. The two of them continuously traveled North-west as Rui soaked in the sights of the rest of the continent. This was the first time that he was so far from the Shionel Confederation that many of the locals in the villages and towns that they had periodically resided in had never even heard of the Kandrian Empire!

This was a shock to both Rui and Kane. The two of them were accustomed to everybody that they had ever interacted with knowing exactly what the Kandrian Empire was. It was one of the four powerhouse bigshot nations from the very far-east side of the Panama Continent.

The fact that almost none of them had even heard of what the Kandrian Empire was showed Rui how much lower the flow of information was in this world compared to Earth. Communication devices and remote communication were not entirely normal to him, however, he hadn't forgotten that prior to becoming a Martial Artist, he had never even seen such a communication device his entire life.

Only the upper echelons of society had access to more robust forms of communication and information transmission through esoteric technology, most of the human civilization couldn't use it, thus their awareness of nations far away from their homes was quite limited.

This was probably the first time that Rui and Kane had gotten so far away from the influence of the Kandrian Empire and the Martial Union. At such distances, it was not easy for the Martial Union to intervene as strongly as it could within the domain of its control. Most of the time, they had never gotten out of the domain of influence of the Martial Union. Even on missions, they had usually gone to nations that were firmly within the grasp of the Martial Union.

Even the Shionel Confederation, while still far enough to be out of the immediate domain of influence, was still subject to implicit constraints due to how powerful the Kandrian Empire.

Even that minor condition wasn't true here, although he still wasn't as far as he would have liked to have been, it was a good first step.