The Martial Unity

"You look rough." Kane noted.

"I've had a rough a day." Rui replied. "My mission was hard, and I failed."

Kane glanced back at Rui. "Oof, that must be rough. But hey, it happens to everyone. Chin up." He put an arm around Rui's shoulder. "What mission did you choose?"

"Bodyguard." Rui replied with a single word.

Kane's eyes widened as he realized why Rui had been looking so down, and why the failure had hit him so hard. "...Damn."

"Yeah, it was rough." Rui sighed. "I had chosen a bodyguard mission of grade one, looking to take things slow with an easy mission to break the ice. Turns out the mission was actually a grade five mission, at the very least." Rui paused.

Kane jerked his head back in shock. "Grade five?? Those are only for missions that are able to threaten the lives of Martial Apprentices. You and I shouldn't even be allowed to take missions of that grade."

"Yeah, the mission's difficulty was severely underestimated by the Martial Academy, apparently." Rui sighed helplessly. "My target of protection was being hunted down by a huge local behemoth of an esoteric supplier, we were being pursued by gangs and even a Martial Apprentice."

"That's actually insane, what the fuck?" Kane was entirely in disbelief. "I'm impressed you survived."

"I only managed because their prime target wasn't me, they managed to hold me back with a Martial Apprentice who pulled me away from my target, and my target was killed after she was eperated from me."

"That's messed up."

"Yeah."

silence, before Rui

mission did you undertake?" Rui asked. "You

shrugged. "Had

"Deer?"

a high pre-requisite as far as maneuvering techniques went. So I chose the mission

mission was it?" Rui asked

mission to ensure I didn't have to go

with Kane really did put

do more missions right?" Kane asked. "Since you must

"No, I did."

Kane tilted

of the mission, and would be remunerating me with the mission-success reward in addition

awesome. How many Martial Credits is

total of fifty-seven Martial

able to purchase

I wanted to set out to grow

"I'd suggest amassing some more credits as well as mission experience before

to grow stronger had made him a tad too impatient. He had really

growth trajectory was extremely optimistic. What he needed was a well-founded, stable growth. Rashly picking some technique with

get a 'somewhat not-bad' technique with that, which was

were above foundational free techniques, that didn't mean they were good. In fact, Rui was largely as strong as he was not because his techniques were super powerful, but because he used them much better than Martial Apprentices of his age and growth level. A large portion of his strength came from the predictive and counter-deductive systems of the VOID algorithm and the resourceful

not was to comprehensively build upon the foundation of his Martial Art in a less constrained way. This meant accumulating enough martial