The Martial Unity

"You boys finally leaving, hm?" The innkeeper asked with a gentle smile.

"Yes, Grandma," Rui smiled.

They had grown close to her over the several months of their stay here.

She sighed melancholically. "The Martial world is dangerous, stay safe."

Rui raised an eyebrow.

They had never disclosed their statuses as Martial Artists to the elderly lady.

"Huhu, I may have grown old but I have lived a long life. I can see a Martial Artist from a mile away," She gently chuckled.

Rui had a complicated expression. "Er, about that… Could please keep our identity as Martial Artists a secret if anyone comes around asking?"

She smiled warmly. "What Martial Artists? I haven't seen any around here."

Kane smirked. "Thanks, Grandma, see you again someday!"

The two of them left the inn after bidding her goodbye.

"Alright, let's go!" Kane immediately dashed away, leaving Rui behind.

"Er… Which way is West again?" He sheepishly asked after coming back with his tail in between his legs.

Rui sighed, chuckling. "I get that you're hyped, but follow the guy who actually knows where it is."

"After you, navigator sir," Kane gestured dramatically. "And don't hold me back. I tolerate your slowpoke travel speed wordlessly under normal circumstances. But this time I'm in a hurry!"

"I'll do my best," Rui mirthlessly laughed as he activated Gale Force Breathing, Outer Convergence, and a quasi-Forestep.

By his calculations, they would be moving fast enough that the technique would last until they reached there as long as he consumed some potions.

He truly did not want to be deadweight to Kane.

And he was right.

The two of them dashed through the wind at a riveting speed.

It wasn't two hours later that they reached their destination!

Such was the speed of Martial Squires. Thousands of kilometers could be crossed in a matter of hours. It was only when they traveled across a portion of the continent could the journey take weeks, or even a month of travel even for Martial Squires like Rui and Kane.

Relative to that, the town of Crexeet wasn't that far, in fact, it could even be said to be in the geographic neighborhood of the Thundering Valley!

It showed Rui how absolutely gigantic this continent and planet was!

('Just based on the size of the continent that I've come to understand this planet is much larger than even Jupiter!')

It was hard for Rui to imagine how life bloomed so vigorously on such a gigantic planet and spread so far. The conditions for life were fragile, and there were a ton of constraints that planets were subject to in order for them to be able to host life.

It was surely harder for larger planets to do that compared to smaller planets, given the harsh gravitational acceleration that larger and more massive planets tended to have.

He had already verified that gravity worked the way he knew it because his Riemannian Echo technique functioned the way it would if gravity worked the way it did.

Yet this begged the question, why did the gravity on this planet seem identical to that of Earth's?

Rui had never considered it before, but it didn't make sense. Things fell at the same speed as they normally did on Earth. Thus, Rui had come to the conclusion that the acceleration due to gravity was the same here as it was on Earth.

('Unless all humans here are stronger than their Earth counterparts and their perception of time is slower than that of the humans of Earth,') Rui mused.

"Hey!" Kane snapped in front of his face. "We're here. Stop dazing out."

"Cut me some slack," Rui grumbled. "I've been running with Forestep continuously, I'm tired."

Kane ignored him as he turned back ahead, peering into the distance. "So that's Crexeet town, huh? Looks… disappointing."

"It looks exactly like how towns are supposed to look," Rui grumbled. "You're just spoiled by the excitement of the Thundering Valley and the Umiana Trench."

Kane couldn't deny that. Those two locations were special and fantastically exotic. Everything else came off as mundane compared to a hole in the ocean, and lightning for rain!

"Oh, looks like we have company," The two of them detected a Martial Squire along with some Martial Apprentices tagging along.

This was immediately odd.

Martial Apprentices had no place in a confrontation between Martial Squires. Which is what this undoubtedly was. Rui could sense that the Martial Squire wasn't there to have small talk with the two of them.

"Who are you, and what is your purpose here?" The man gruffly spoke with a voice that matched his gargantuan body.

The first impression one would get from the Martial Path was that he was almost certainly centered around power, offense, or defense. His incredibly buff and developed body simply got rid of a number of other possibilities such as a Martial Path centered around maneuvering or stamina or something like that.

Rui analyzed the muscle spec configuration of his body, trying to gauge what his Martial Path was.

('The muscles of his forearms are the largest,') Rui noted.

That wasn't necessarily anything of not by itself, however, stronger forearm muscles corresponded with more powerful hands and fingers.

And his hands were menacingly large, large enough to wrap around the entirety of Rui's skull.

Despite that, Rui didn't feel too much of a threat from the man. He was at most a high-grade Martial Squire. If a fight broke out, Rui was confident that he would be able to take him down himself.

"We're traveling Martial Squires, and we wish to enter the town of Crexeet. We're here to get stronger," Kane resolutely replied.

The man furrowed his eyebrows. "So you aren't from the Ferendel Duchy, or the Senten Kingdom?"

The two of them exchanged a glance before turning back to the man.

"Uh, no?"

The man stared at them for a few more seconds before huffing lightly. "If you make a mess, you'll be disposed of. Don't forget that while you're here. And welcome to the town of Crexeet."