The Martial Unity

"I'm just inquiring," Rui raised his arms lightly. "I have no intention of pressuring you at all."

"It's taking time because you want such a bizarre esoteric like Tethered Bellhorn Steel," The man scowled. "Why on Earth would you want such a heavy esoteric alloy to fashion the blade out of?"

Rui smiled. "Everyone has their necessities."

"Any why on Earth do you want a scabbard that cools it?" The man furrowed his eyebrows. "That does not help in battle!"

Rui didn't even bother gracing that with a reply, simply smiling instead.

The man sighed exaggeratedly before shrugging. "Whatever, you're paying a huge amount of money, so it's fine I guess. There are all kinds of strange people in the world."

Rui did not mind being perceived that way. He was not going to genuinely inform the man what his intentions were, after all.

Rui had dug deep into the information surrounding the most ubiquitous esoteric substances and compounds of the Shionel Dungeon very thoroughly, going beyond just the information that Julian had provided him. He had found great detail on several phenomena and chemical reactions involving the Shionel esoteric substances as well as others that could potentially serve as the basis of the technique that he was looking to make.

In his deep studies, he had somehow managed to run into one particular obscure journal of a now-dissolved small private research institute in the Kandrian Empire, detailing a series of experiments between one of the ubiquitous Shionel esoteric compound Whitemane Dust and a rarer esoteric alloy known as Tethered Bellhorn Steel. The experiment revealed that a reaction between the two compounds in their natural states at low temperatures caused a violent exothermic reaction where the Whitemane Dust exhibited extreme phobic tendencies towards cooled Tethered Bellhorn Steel. The greater the amount and the lower the temperature, the greater the force with which Whitemane Dust repelled away from the cooled Tethered Bellhorn Steel.

The reaction was so violent and exothermic that the procedural experimentation chamber that was isolated from the observation lab to protect the researchers was unable to contain the violent reaction. The Whitemane Dust subjected to cooled Tethered Bellhorn Steel blasted away with such force that it breached the safety measures and the barrier between the observation lab and the procedural chamber, almost killing all of the researchers in the process. The experiment was called off and the overarching project was deemed a failure and had thus been dismissed in the eyes of the esoteric science community.

Rui had only found this after six weeks of scouring scientific literature for additional information beyond what he had been provided by Julian.

Julian had given him a good place to start, however, the solution that he sought wasn't within the information that his brother had organized for him.

He scoured every library in the country in the span of six weeks aggressively inputting, processing, and assimilating all the information he had come across before finally running into something experiments hadn't even heard of before.

('This is perfect,') He had grinned when he came across the research journal. ('One man's trash is another man's treasure.')

To think that Whitemane Dust, an esoteric confirmed to have been present in the epithelial and blood of all of the species existing in the Shionel Dungeon, was so unstable in such a reaction.

('It's just what I need,') Rui nodded. ('What if a blade fashioned out of cooled Tethered Bellhorn Steel pierces their flesh that is saturated with Whitemane Dust?')

The wound would be extremely exacerbated by the cooled Tethered Bellhorn Steel reacting to the Whitemane Dust in the flesh and blood of the monster, causing the latter to blow apart from it violently and magnifying the size of the injury while causing a ton of internal damage.

Even if it was a high-grade monster, Rui strongly suspected that even a single swing would be enough to cause a lethal wound and a vast amount of internal injuries. It would allow Rui to exert a level of lethality within the Shionel Dungeon that would be unheard of for a grade-six Martial Artist like himself.

('On top of that, I have had plenty of time to prepare,') He smiled mischievously inwardly. ('Which means the full power of the VOID algorithm could be unleashed.')

Rui had been working on expanding the scope of the Adaptive Evolution model by incorporating simplistic sword-based maneuvers.

He had been scouring through the data collected on the approach to combat the various dominant species of the Shionel Dungeon and had formed basic adaptations to each species with a combination of a thorough analysis of the data as well as some common sense.

While this was absolutely by no means a universal solution for all fauna, it was a small first step in that direction.

"You better be practicing hard with that sparring replica I gave you," The man spat. "This sword's center of gravity will be gone completely to shit because you insist on using such a heavy esoteric substance as the main blade," Veins had started popping on his forehead just thinking about it. "Any sword techniques you knew will become largely worthless with a sword like this. Tsk, it's so horribly off-balance that I almost want to hack at you with it when I'm done for forcing me to forge you this sword."

Rui burst out laughing. "You do realize I'm a Martial Squire, right? What you said just now could be interpreted as a threat, and I'd have the right to kill you without facing any persecution. Perks of being a Martial Squire within the Kandrian Empire due to the Serevian Covenant."

Rui directed just a tiny bit of bloodlust at the man, yet to his surprise, the man was entirely unfazed.

"You're gonna have to do better than that, boy," The man scoffed.

Rui raised an eyebrow. "Seems like you're not just some old blacksmith, are you?"

"Maybe, maybe not," He turned back, returning to banging away at the molten bar of metal before him.