The Martial Unity

"Nice, they finally found it," Rui grinned from a kilometer away from their position. He had been waiting patiently for quite some time for these three to stumble upon the fourteenth floor.

While the intelligence that Guildmaster Bradt possessed detailed the hos, whys, and whats of the exploration process, it did not give Rui precise data on what paths the Exploration Department of Deacon Industries was exploring. He needed to spend about three days finding the closest team that he could redirect to the fourteenth floor of the Shionel Dungeon.

Then, with a combination of sealing off alternative paths, and redirecting the path a bit by changing the location of the markers beyond a certain point to point them straight towards the fourteenth floor.

And like clockwork, they walked right into the fourteenth floor. At the moment they were convinced that they had come about this by natural coincidence, however, they would not be able to begin to conceive the fact that they were dancing in the palm of the Voider.

His job was done, now he just needed to sit back and wait, and bide his time until the moment was just right.

Soon after, the team hurriedly returned back to Deacon Industries alive as they informed Chairman Deacon of their discovery.

"A new floor eh? Brilliant," Chairman Deacon smiled. "Finally, fate is starting to smile upon me. Immediately begin standard floor securing protocols and measures. Make sure not a single damn foreign adventurer discovers that thing and gets away alive. I don't even want the public to ever learn of the existence of this new floor, the fourteenth floor."

"Yes sir," His secretary bowed, leaving his office to fulfill his new orders.

"Hm," Chairman Deacon could not help but smile, pleased at this turn of events. It seemed that finally, he was having a stroke of good luck. The recent events surrounding the Shionel Dungeon had been extremely unpleasant and had left a bad taste in his mouth. So much so that he couldn't help but wonder if he had been infected with bad luck or something.

"Of course not,"

He was not a superstitious man.

"With the esoteric resource deposits of this floor, I should be able to regain momentum in the supplier market, overthrowing Esosale Suppliers," He smirked. "It's a shame I won't be able to see the look on the Voider's face when they realize that they missed an entire floor to explore."

Unbeknownst to him, Rui had been watching the movements of Deacon Industries carefully. He watched as Deacon Industries dispatched nearly a hundred Martial Squires immediately after the report had been processed!

As always, Rui was highly impressed with the sheer number of Martial Squires that were employed under Deacon Industries. He knew that they were not messing around and were going to take full charge of the Shionel Dungeon, killing any Martial Squire that was inevitably going to discover it, by monitoring all the tunnels leading into the Shionel Dungeon.

Of course, this was not enough to stop Rui. But he did not intend on entering the dungeon until it was time to steal the prize of the dungeon.

('I'm going to have to spend a lot of time in the dungeon just monitoring the progress of the Deacon Industries. If I'm even a split second too late, I can kiss any chance of stealing the giant ore deposit at the center of the dungeon beneath the tree goodbye.') Rui narrowed his eyes.

He had a very short window to act upon, otherwise, the nature of his operation risked being exposed far too much.

('Ideally, I need to make it so that they never even have a chance to witness the esoteric ore deposit at the center of the dungeon beneath the tree,') Rui noted. This was a rough condition for him. But, if they never came in to direct contact with the ore deposited, then they could never know that something that big was stolen and disappeared right before their very eyes. This way, they would never realize the nature of Rui's and Kane's esoteric ore extraction operation.

This would require extremely accurate timing from Rui's end. But he was confident that he would be able to accomplish it.

('This is especially so since I'll have plenty of time to build predictive models on all of the Martial Squires from Deacon Industries that will be partaking in the clearing of this dungeon floor,') Rui mused.

One good thing about sitting back and observing was that Rui could gather huge amounts of data from observing all of the Martial Squires of Deacon Industries slashing and attacking the branches. This could allow him to develop predictive models for all the Martial Squires partaking in the clearing of the fourteenth floor of the Shionel Dungeon.

Thus, at the crucial moment of leaping in and stealing the prize of the fourteenth floor, he could operate with a very deep understanding of how those Martial Squires were going to act, and how they were going to react. With this, he could minimize the probability of something highly unexpected unfolding in the stealing of the giant esoteric ore deposit at the center of the fourteenth floor, throwing him off his plans.

('At the later stage of their clearing of the Shionel Dungeon, Kane and I will probably have to camp out here in order to make sure that we're here for the right moment. Hell, we'll probably have to follow them right behind their backs as they're finishing the final set of branch attacks,')

There was effectively no other way to make sure that they would be able to time the heist just right. He could not possibly rush from within the tunnels leading right to the fourteenth floor all the way to the center of the floor before they managed to secure it.

('Hm, I should give this more thought and flesh it out. Better safe than sorry. If Chairman Deacon gets a hold of me, death will end up looking pleasant.