The Martial Unity

"That was unexpectedly not tiring," Rui murmured when the ceremony ended.

"There are too many people to keep waiting for too long," Master Deivon explained. "We Martial Masters alone make it not worth stretching the entire event for too long. Our time is too valuable, when we're not training, we're still working on important matters and fulfilling our duties."

"Then that means this so-called banquet is also not going to take too long, right?" Rui asked with a hopeful look.

"Ah, I'm afraid I might have to disappoint you," Master Deivon smirked. "The banquet is a part of our duties, so our time is well-spent."

Rui sighed. He had been fine with the banquet before, but after listening to what Sage Sariawar had to say, Rui didn't want to bother with such boring stuff. In fact, he wanted to skip forward to the Martial Contest immediately. He felt quite impatient to push himself against his peers, especially after listening to what Sage Sariawar had to say.

But alas, he was not the organizer of the Martial Festival, unfortunately. He would have to make do with it.

The banquet hall was gigantic, bigger than any other he had ever seen, not that he had been to many banquet halls in the first place.

An entire layout of food was present, and an absurdly luxurious buffet had been organized for all of the guests. Many began pouring into the hall, most of them being contestants who looked forward to having a hearty deal.

couldn't help but feel sympathetic to the Martial Squires who didn't manage to get a patron that could increase their appeal to scouts and potential employers. These contestants would have a much harder time trying to find attractive organizations

the challenge of finding a powerful organization that possessed the resources to help Martial Squires grow stronger was quite great for most Martial Squires. Many Martial Squires were born in parts of the continent that did not have many Martial Seniors, meaning that the region they were in did not possess the resources to make reaching the Senior

one such region. Martial Squires in that region were not foolish enough to believe that their chances of reaching the Senior Realm were high. There was a proportion of them

organizations that were capable of giving them the training and growth

who merely used the contest as a way to advertise themselves to the guests. The main contest didn't even need to strictly begin, the fact that each of the thousand of them had managed to overcome hundreds of Martial

grade-ten Martial Squires, and the minority that were grade-nine were cut from

the banquet were the best of the best. It was just that those with patrons would receive far better opportunities than those

in. Businessmen and women, envoys, representatives, delegates, directors, and even heads of

of them had impassive facades but Rui could easily sense that they were keenly scouring through all the contestants, looking for ones that they

narrowed as he actually spotted some familiar

Commissioner Reze.

make eye contact or show any special attention to the man. It wasn't that he was opposed to the man finding out, he had already decided that that was a trivial outcome, but he did not want

to be in a subtle manner. At the very least, Rui could not express any intention to want to speak

of suspicion welled up within him. The Martial Union had countless envoys, diplomats, commissioners, and other officials and dignitaries, any of whom could have been picked to