The Martial Unity

"Interesting." Rui murmured. "It does make sense to turn to human augmentation or evolution if the superior physical parameters of Martial Squires were human engineered. Furthermore, it's clearly a procedure that only Martial Apprentices can go through, that should serve as a rather important clue when researching the breakthrough to the Squire Realm."

Rui resumed reading, moving on to the next section.

[Introduction: The goal of project Apotheosis is to discover or create a stable and consistent means of breaking through to the Squire Realm. As discussed in the previous section, the primary approach to fulfilling this goal is through a brute force attempt to naturally discover the process by engaging in research in all feasible means of human augmentation.

Although at first glance it seems to be far too large of scope to attempt, there are several constraints that reduce the number of possibilities from near-infinite to a much more manageable, albeit still extremely difficult, number.

The first condition is that it's a process that can successfully work only on Martial Apprentices, and only Squire Candidates, due to unknown reasons. It is clear that this means physical augmentation is not something that can be applied to humans or even most Martial Apprentices for that matter. That filters out several potential possibilities. The only physiological difference between Martial Apprentices and humans lies in the brain, thus we've decided to prioritize potential methods that aim to augment humans to those especially related to the brain in any way whatsoever.

The second condition is that it is unlikely to be a process that is highly financially taxing. We can be relatively certain of this. If the Squire breakthrough is purely the result of one or more extremely valuable and scarce esoteric resources or technologies, then we would not observe the sheer population of Martial Squires universally distributed across the Panama Continent and human civilization. It is clear that the difficulty of the breakthrough does not come from economic constraints.

The third condition is that the process is singular, it is not a collection of fundamentally different enhancement methods, but one enhancement method at the core that fundamentally enhances the body in its entirety. Thus, we can ignore methods that exclusively are completely limited to one portion of the body.]

"Interesting." Rui murmured. He did think this was the most reasonable path forward. He couldn't even begin to imagine how difficult stumbling onto the breakthrough of the Squire Realm was, but they certainly were being pragmatic about their approach to the matter.

He resumed reading.

[Down below are certain avenues of research that are under consideration;

Varnardium Blood Refining Spongification.

Infire Leech detoxification.

Cranial Grecardian Bleoplast Infection.

Drilliomint Intoxication.

...

Brunhild Spore Bone Marrow saturation.]

"Wow." Rui muttered. He didn't understand even a single one of the mentioned avenues of research. He felt as though he was back in high school and college.

It was effectively the same. The potential candidates of the breakthrough method to the Squire Realm were all based on the esoteric phenomena of the world of Gaia.

"I'm going to have to get Julian's help on this." Rui sighed. He didn't want to just skim on without, at the very least, gaining an understanding of the core of the methodologies involved. Otherwise, there would be no point in having memorized the information at hand.

"I should also purchase information on the methodologies involved." Rui noted. "That way even if Julian is unfamiliar with something in the research data, I can provide the information needed on the matter."

Rui got up, immediately leaving his dorm room. He headed over to the student affairs department and applied for a leave. He wished to head back home so he could talk to Julian immediately, now was the time he would have returned from the Kandrian Institute of Sciences.

To his surprise, the application was accepted on the spot.

"Aren't these things supposed to take time?" He asked, curious.

"Normally, they do." The staff member replied, smiling. "But your profile is marked with the permission to leave the Academy any time you want."

"I see..."

It seemed even the Academy did not see the need for Rui to remain in it, at this point. It had no problem with him leaving whenever he wanted. All of this supported the notion that his time at the Martial Academy was coming to an end.

Rui left the Academy as he headed straight home. At his current speed, it only took him twenty minutes to reach the Quarrier Orphanage.

"RRUUUIIIII" Alice greeted him loudly with a smile when he arrived. "Surprise visit!"

"Hehehe." Rui smiled. "I had some free time and some stuff to do."

"Come in!"

The adults and children all greeted Rui.

"Big brother, teach us Martial Art!"

"Yeah! Teach us Martial Art!"

Rui's Martial Art had fascinated all the children in the Orphanage, but of them all, it had truly struck Max and Mana the most. They had dedicated themselves to the training regimes that Rui had told them to practice and it reflected.

Rui could see that their muscle tone had visibly grown since he last saw them nine months ago, which meant they were most certainly training very hard, just as hard as he did.

('I should put them through even more kick-boxing and Brazillian jiu-jitsu training like what I went through.') Rui mused. He had used the physical and combat training methodologies from Earth back when he had been training for the Martial Exam becoming remarkably proficient at them by the time, he reached the age of thirteen. It certainly had helped him last in the Martial Exam and staved off the huge disadvantage he was at to a certain degree as far as the age gap went.

It certainly would give them an edge. At the very least Rui was sure they would eventually manage to get in before they cross the age limit for the Martial Exam.

"Welcome back Rui." Julian smiled. "What brings you back on this surprise visit?"

Rui turned to Julian. "I need your help with something, I think you'll find it interesting."

"Oh?" Julian raised an eyebrow. "I already am interested."