The Martial Unity

"Unlike me, they will most certainly not possess a rich understanding of what exactly it is that they are dealing with it," Rui continued. "Like with all the previous floors that they have explored, they're supremely confident in the quantity and quality of their raid force."

The raid force and exploration teams of the Deacon alliance were quite powerful, and this gave them the confidence to be quite brave in the manner that they explored dungeons.

There was an unshakable sense of confidence that came with so many powerful Martial Squires gathered densely within a floor to clear whatever monsters they ran into, and plunder all the esoteric ore deposits that they came across.

It can be hard to make great work when its stolen from 𝗯𝐞𝗱𝐧𝐨𝘃𝐞𝐥.𝗼𝗿𝐠.

It also came from the dominating victories that they had against the monsters of each dungeon.

Of course, this didn't mean they lowered their guards and acted sloppily, certainly not. At the end of the day, the Shionel Dungeon was an extremely unsettling place for Martial Squires, just the very fact that their powerful senses were so hampered meant that they could never truly let their guards down in this place. It meant that they could not grow too cocky, even if they tried.

Still, Rui was sure that employing his enemy against his enemy to obtain more intelligence on both of them, but especially the Root, while also weakening it in the process as he cleared the dungeon.

He wasn't sure to what degree they would be able to weaken the Root, after all, he lacked too much of the huge amount of data needed to predict that parameter. But he was certain about the end outcome.

"So you're convinced they'll lose, huh," Kane gave it some thought. "That makes the Root sound even more scary, how is what is basically a quasi-Senior level creature doing in a Squire-level dungeon, honestly."

"It's part of the dungeon, thus it bypasses the rule," Rui reminded him. ｂｅ𝚍𝚗𝚘ｖｅ𝚕．ｃ𝚘𝚖

"Yeah, but how is a Squire-level dungeon able to produce a quasi-Senior-level organ?" Kane raised an eyebrow.

"You're misunderstanding 'Squire-level' for its physical capabilities," Rui shook his head. "It's a Squire-level dungeon in the sense that only Martial Squires can enter without triggering its defense mechanisms. The actual life form that the fused vegetation has constituted as a whole is a Senior-level being. The Root, being a part of that, is a quasi-Senior level being. The same goes for the Serevian Dungeon, as a whole, the dungeon was probably a level or two weaker than I currently am."

"That makes sense, actually," Kane had to admit. "So when do you plan on executing this plan, how will you even go about it?"

Rui considered the matter. "I could go about it the way I did last time with the sixteenth floor with the tree."

He had purposely lured them into the sixteenth floor by sabotaging the checkpoints that they had set up to be able to track their previous route. They achieved this by relying on technology that contained esoteric substances that were extremely radiative of energy, making tracking them quite easy.

They were originally designed for long-range tracking over extraordinarily large distances, but within the Shionel Dungeon, they could only be tracked if one was within ten meters of them. That was the sheer degree to which the Shionel Dungeon's energy jamming trait affected it.

The exploration method of Deacon Industries involved employing thousands of these to cover massive distances and making sure that they could never lose track of their old paths.

Rui had once shifted the checkpoint trackers and redirected them to a floor that he had wanted them to clear for him.

There was a good chance that he could employ a similar strategy to lure them to the Root Floor.

"Remember that the sixteenth floor that we did end up using this strategy to clear, did end up being a fiasco that ended up giving a lot of clues about our modus operandi to Chairman Deacon," Kane reminded him. "This operation is actually quite similar to that one as it involves using our enemies to trick them, so you do need to be very careful."

"Yeah, you're definitely right about that," Rui nodded. "I actually have a rule. I won't be entering the dungeon until the Martial Squires of Chairman Deacon are all dead or gone."

Kane nodded. This rule prevented the possibility of any Martial Squire ever perceiving him and thereby gaining more clues on him that could increase the probability of them being caught by Chairman Deacon.

Rui definitely did not want such an outcome to happen.

With how much Chairman Deacon hated his guts at the moment, the second that the man found out his identity, he would deploy his formidable power to ensure that Rui gets exterminated. In the worst-case scenario, he might even use the Quarrier Orphanage as leverage, or just massacre them just to spite Rui.

Even if the distance between the Shionel Confederation and the Kandrian Empire exceeded ten thousand kilometers, it was far from insurmountable if Chairman Deacon was willing to go to the lengths when it came to Rui.

That was what Rui was afraid of the most when it come to this entire conflict. It wasn't just losing the battle over the resources of the Shionel Confederation, it was putting himself, and the people he cared about in direct danger.

Thus he intended to make sure that there was absolutely nothing that went wrong in whatever plan he did decide to enact.

"I don't know if I necessarily need to sabotage their tracking and direct them to the Root floor immediately, anyway," Rui mentioned. "They'll find it naturally eventually. Messing with their tracks is more complicated because if the total distance that they have covered does not exceed the shortest distance from the starting point to the Root Floor, then it will be impossible for me to lead them to the Root Floor."

"Why would it?" Kane raised an eyebrow.

"Because distance needs to be conserved. The trackers need to be ten meters from each other regardless of direction so the total distance cannot change, thus if it's lesser than I need it to be, there's nothing that can be done."