The Martial Unity

The spy, or whatever the source of the leak was, was probably a native of the Zurtun town who probably managed to squiggle his way into a place where he could learn important information and relay it back to Fushin.

This would explain why the Kandrian Martial Union did not possess any intelligence on the Britannian Martial Squire that Rui ended up facing and killing. While the Kandrian Martial Union no doubt had a powerful intelligence department that had plenty of means of gathering information with a gigantic network of intelligence sources over a large geographic area, it probably didn't have access to more information about Fort Zurtun than Fushin himself did due to his unique position and sources and intimate familiarity with the fort.

As much as Rui wanted to, he couldn't fault the Martial Union too much here. It was a bit unreasonable to expect them to know about a Martial Squire who had covertly been deployed to the fort extremely recently. The Martial royalty contract that Martial Artists signed with the Martial Union stated that intelligence could not be guaranteed to be entirely accurate always. That was not how the intelligence sector worked, and he was cognizant of that fact.

But frankly, he didn't feel as though he had been done wrong.

('If anything...') Rui grinned. ('This was the perfect set of events for me.')

He got to fight a Martial Squire well ahead of when he would normally have gotten to do so had it been a normal grade three mission, after all. Furthermore, he beat his opponent. This would effectively force the Martial Union to concede what was already obvious that he was ready for missions of a higher grade because of his qualifications, accelerating what would otherwise have taken longer.

Everything was fine, except...

with a resigned expression. He had mixed feelings on the issue. On one hand, the general's actions had inadvertently done a lot of good for Rui, on the

to shake this off considering all the benefits,

Rui took pride in his mind and intelligence. His mind was extraordinary, and his intelligence was easily in the genius-level territory. That was why he felt affronted having

a level field. The old man was intelligent, no doubt, but more importantly, he was extremely experienced. He had served a lifetime in the field of strategies and tactics in conflicts of all sorts, according to his background. Rui was intelligent but had zero meaningful experience

he was constrained by the mission rules and guidelines as well, since he was in the middle of a mission. Reneging on an accepted mission for unjustifiable reasons was an ugly stain on his record that would be publicly visible. Ensuring that didn't happen was more important than trying to win

requires a fee, and also

a mission at any time. Thus, several rules, conditions, and penalties had been placed to discourage

skywalking away. He had no intention of returning to Fort Zurtun now that the mission had been canceled. He simply wished the rebels good

the night together. He wasn't going to delay his return to the Kandrian Empire to bid her an awkward goodbye or delay his return to the Kandrian Empire to spend another night with her. At most he could bid her and the Martial Apprentices good luck on the battle and their Martial