The Martial Unity

The supply dispatch had exited borders of the town of Hajin just under two hours. The Apprentices in the carriage had already perked up, growing more and more alert. They had decided that at the very least a minimum of three of them ought to keep a lookout at any given point in time.

Although the dispatch naturally had guards on horses forming something of a perimeter around the dispatch team, surveilling their surroundings, Martial Apprentices were still better. The Foundational Stage of the Academy carefully trained sensory awareness as well as their kinetic vision well beyond the norm. And the discovery of the Martial Path further raised those attributes and parameters above the conventional limit.

Three Martial Apprentices keeping an eye from within a carriage were better sources of surveillance than all the guards on horses outside.

Rui was currently off-surveillance duty along with Dalen. He used this time to gather his thoughts.

('According to the intel provided by the Martial Union, the bandits likely operate by incapacitating the dispatch convoy by crippling their means of transport.') Rui mused. ('In most cases that involves damaging the carriages sufficiently enough and slaughtering the horses.')

The reason the bandits did this was because the chances of survival of any travelling convoy was minimal if they could not maintain a high mode of transport.

Thus, even in the unlikely situation that a travelling transport or supplies dispatch convoy had the means to counter them, they would not be able to escape their predicament easily at all. The bandits could simply retreat and wait until for the right moment to launch an ambush.

Of course, thus far not a single travelling convoy had been able to successfully resist the bandit ambushes.

('Yet despite this, they continue with the norms of crippling the means of transportation in their initial strike.') Rui thought. ('That sounds uncharacteristically careful for bandits.')

an organized strike force. Yet all the data that Rui had gone through indicated that

a disciplined group of criminals, that was much scarier than messing with a random group of thugs who simply used a braindead numbers advantage

bandit group

with some entity in the black market was much more likely, this would explain the sense of order that Rui got from them. Perhaps

The point was that if they were targeting means of transport then the group would have a hard

about their modus operandi did not mean they would be able to counter it. In their current circumstances, knowing this did not particularly allow them

the end of the day was to defend, protect and eliminate threats. That did not change regardless of what intel they possessed. At most they could finetune their measures to

Largely because of the nature of

were the measure they could take to mitigate

to abandon the outer ring of the convoy and focus on the most important

the convoy were mostly there to act as a shield for the inner portion of the convoy, where the valuable high-grade esoteric supplies

Rui and the others of the Martial Quint would immediately focus on ensuring the inner circles endured as little harm as possible. The outer circles were pretty much intended

town of Hajin, and the mountains that were

reached the base, it seems." Dalen noted. "The Shadow Trails is only

a long time since I came here." Fae

before?" Rui turned