The Martial Unity

A simple and safe routine had taken hold of their day-to-day life, something that was quite alien to the two of them had taken place. Rui had almost forgotten what it was like to not be in a place surrounded by people who would kill him in the first instance of knowing his true identity.

Although they still had to now hide their real identities with prepared aliases, the Trench Surveillance Force did not require Martial Artists to register with their identities, each Martial Artist was given a code, and their evaluations, training slots, and housing were all registered to the code.

It was a system that allowed for all Martial Squires to maintain anonymity, which was how most Martial Artists preferred it. He had kept his mask on most of the time, he had no intention of revealing his appearance so freely even if he had changed his hair and eyes to silver.

Had this been Earth, Chairman Deacon would have found him already. There were cameras everywhere and silver hair and eyes would not be enough to fool facial recognition software. Furthermore, the internet encompassed pretty much the entire planet thus the data could be transmitted quite far.

However, this was not the case here. Communication technology was highly nerfed in this world in so far as the bandwidth and the range, they were orders of magnitude weaker than that of Earth.

Furthermore, the only information about Rui that Chairman Deacon could ever obtain on Rui was a detailed description, and that would not be enough to be able to tie him to the Voider.

Rui had avoided using techniques that could easily be traced back to Rui Quarrier, thankfully, neither his new technique nor Forestep could be attributed to him due to how recent and unknown they were. There was absolutely nothing that tied him with Rui at the moment and he intended to keep it that way.

It was the reason that he had decided to avoid using his most well-known techniques. They were too close to the Shionel Dungeon, relatively speaking, for him to take such risks. What if he used Mighty Roar Flash Blast too many times and Chairman Deacon somehow hears the word of a Martial Artist with powerful mastery over sound, eh might choose to investigate.

Of course, once they were far away from the Shionel Confederation, Rui had absolutely no qualms about using more techniques, but at the moment they were simply too close to the Shionel Confederation.

Perhaps when they reached closer and closer to their destinations in the west, could he actually think about going all out without any concern.

Regardless, Rui felt relaxed in the environment they were in given that everybody around him wouldn't him even if they knew his identity. It was rather funny because he felt more unsafe in the Shionel Confederation than he did in the Umiana Trench despite being surrounded by an ocean that threatened to swallow everything every second of the day. He felt more comfortable sleeping in these circumstances than he did in the Shionel Confederation.

That sensation was therapeutically relaxing as he honed his mindset in a daily strict routine of discipline.

And just like that, two months passed.

After three months of honing the new technique he had chosen to dub Reverberating Dispersion in addition to Forestep technique, he had grown increasingly proficient with both techniques. Both of the two techniques were not techniques he had had too much experience with it, and the two months of constant use had increased his comfort with them.

He also became able to maintain a grade-ten training section for much longer than he used to be able to do so before. However, it was still far less than the Martial Squires who were able to maintain their training sessions multiple times his maximum time.

The reason for that was that it was truly their normal power while it was his limit. He could not possibly hit harder and get a better result, but they easily could if they wanted.

It was a reminder that the gap between him and grade-ten Martial Squires under normal circumstances was not small. Although he had managed to perform feats that shocked even them, they were not weak by any means.

In the past three months, Kane had also grown stronger as well. He had struggled with even the weakest Squire-level training sections that he could get, but two months of practicing his striking had at least caused him to gain a stronger foundation. In the past three months, he had managed to upgrade to grade-two training sections. A feat that he was inordinately pleased with.

At the end of three months, Rui's itch for adventure and color had finally accumulated enough for him to agree to Kane's desire to leave. The Umiana Trench could grow tiresome as far as the atmospheric and environmental conditions went.

The constant roaring of the ocean in the distance, the high humidity, and the perennial scent of salt water could grow irritating if one wasn't accustomed to them.

Explore the extended edition on 𝒃𝙚𝒅𝒏𝙤𝙫𝒆𝒍．𝙘𝒐𝙢.

"Finally!" Kane heaved a sigh as they packed up and sky-walked out of the Umiana Trench. "I was so done with that place!"

"It wasn't that bad," Rui shook his head disapprovingly. "For one, it got you to improve your offense, which is one of the few things holding you back from being a truly powerful Martial Squire, Kane." 𝚋𝚎ｄｎｏｖ𝚎𝚕．𝚌ｏｍ

"Yeah yeah, let's move on to more interesting places, the trench has been a novel place, but there's only so much you can get excited about it."

Even then, the two of them couldn't help but admire how exotic and fantastic the phenomenon looked when viewed from high above. They still weren't high enough to view the entirety of the trench as a whole, but even seeing a part of its curve as it disappeared over the horizon was an incredible sight.

"So, where do you want to go?" Rui turned to Kane.

"Some place where we aren't training power!"