The Martial Unity

However, he wasn't sure if there would be a mission that would require five maneuvering Martial Artists and one all-rounder. That sounded like a rather strange mission for the Floating Sect.

In the Kandrian Empire, he would find countless missions that fit the bill in the Martial Union, but not so much in the Floating Sect.

The Martial Union had a huge load of missions from its large market and client that it supplied to countless Martial Artists across the entirety of the nation. The Floating Sect's missions were almost certainly not services or commodities being sold to clients who were interested in purchasing the services of Martial Artists.

Any missions from the Floating Sect would be centered around its own self-interest, especially the interest of self-preservation.

('Self-preservation from the nations of the Kaddar Region, which are its only threat.') Rui mused.

He did predict that most of the missions of the Floating Sect would be centered around the Kaddar Region.

And he was right.

Later after their meal, the six of them visited the deployment department, looking for work that they could do in order to be able to spar with Martial Seniors.

The first thing that Rui thought of when he received a big book containing all the possible operations that they could engage in was that the system there was far less sophisticated than the system of the Martial Union.

In hindsight, he couldn't help but admire how great the system of missions of the Martial Union was. It cleanly took every commission from every clientele, processed it before then splitting them by Realm, field, location and geography, required skillset, estimated time, and even net difficulty. Then the information of the commissions was cleanly processed and assimilated into small booklets; the mission bills, which were then organized by multiple factors, allowed Martial Artists to very easily look for a suitable mission.

It was a sophisticated and robust well-oiled machine.

In comparison, the Floating Sect was a lot more lacking. The missions were not well-organized or sorted. Furthermore, the information that Rui got was not nearly as insightful as the information that he got from the mission bill of the Martial Union.

Of course, he didn't necessarily expect the Floating Sect to be nearly as good as the Martial Union in that regard. It was the literal and core purpose of the Martial Union versus a smaller department within the Floating Sect.

"Hm, hunting for Dervin mushrooms in the Kaddar Everglades…" Kane murmured.

"Protecting a supply shipment to the Floating Sect from the Kaddar Martial Squires surveilling the area…"

"Damaging known long-range artillery weapons of the Darociouen Empire…"

They sounded unsure to Rui, which made sense, admittedly. None of these missions were particularly alluring to them as they were maneuvering-oriented Martial Artists.

"Hey, I found a good one!" Kane exclaimed. "Deliveries from and to the Floating Sect. This is right up our alley."

The others nodded as they grouped up.

Any back and forth between the Floating Sect and the land nations was rife with danger, and the best way to deal with it was simply to avoid it, which the maneuvering-oriented Martial Artists could certainly do better than anybody else.

However, while this was certainly an alluring mission for them, it was rather boring to Rui. He would rather pick something that was more stimulating and would also yield more merits that would allow him to gain more training time with Senior Xanarn.

"I think I'll sit this one out," Rui told Kane. "It's not something I am inclined towards at the moment."

"Damn…" Kane murmured. "Shame the two of us will have to choose something else then."

"No, it's fine," Rui shook his head. "You go with them. This mission will be good training for you, you can exercise your Fulminata technique and compare yourself with your peers."

In hindsight, it was better for Kane to also spend more time with normal Martial Squires to gain a less skewed version of himself. Because of how extraordinary Rui was at times, it was hard for Kane to feel too accomplished about himself.

Spending time with other normal Martial Squires would make him more aware of what normal looked like, and would probably boost his self-esteem and confidence.

Furthermore, it was probably for the best that he could spend time with more normal-minded younger Martial Artists like the small friend group that he had made. Rui was basically a grandpa to him, and it did affect the conversations they had, as much as Rui tried not to allow it to happen.

Furthermore, he didn't want Kane to grow psychologically dependent or too attached to Rui either. The fact he thought of not going with the other four in order to go with whatever Rui wanted to be showed that perhaps it had already happened to a certain extent, especially after they left the Shionel Confederation.

The five of them quickly picked the mission before heading out to complete it.

Rui, on the other hand, took his time. He was in no hurry. Furthermore, he had a nostalgic feeling of skimming through missions looking for the best one from back in his early days.

It had been many years since he had last stood in the mission library, choosing a mission that he would swiftly complete.

It was nostalgic, but also quite melancholic.

('Things used to be a lot more simple back then,') He sighed. It was true, of course, he wasn't confronted with many hardships, and although it hadn't been easy, it hadn't been painful like it was now looking back on those memories.

('I swear to god, when I return to the Kandrian Empire, I'm going to pick a mission from the mission library of the Martial Union and then just complete it before heading back home to eat a good heavy dinner after a long day's work.')

It was funny how back when he used to do that, he would yearn for more, and now he just wished he could experience that once more.