Rui was not unfamiliar with the Kandrian Martial Festival. The Kandrian Martial Festival was a month-long festival dedicated to Martial Art. However, this festival was quite unlike normal festivals. For one, there were no celebrations of the normal kind. The festival was a dedicated event to exhibiting and demonstrating the Martial prowess of the entire nation. The festival was characterized by innumerable Martial tournaments of all scales and sizes, making for a bombastic and exciting one month for the Kandrian Empire.
However, it was a festival that was held once every five years.
This was a decision that the Royal Family and the Martial union for multiple reasons. Firstly, Martial Artist work force was extremely important to the Royal Family and especially to the Martial Union. The completion of missions was an extremely necessary economically and politically. The Martial Artists not just sustained the Martial Union, but contributed to holding the very empire as a whole together.
It was not possible for the Royal Family and the Martial Union to allow the Martial workforce to stop working for a whole month every year, on many levels.
The nation as a system would start breaking apart at the seams, and the Martial Union would experience a noticeable plummet in income.
Thus, they had chosen to limit it to five years. Five years was just long enough for the benefits to outweigh the detriments.
The positivity associated with the Kandrian Martial Festival was one of the means by which the Royal Family and the Martial Union ensured that Martial Artists as a class of society wouldn't grow too disconnected from the Empire and its people. It was a means by which it aimed to tether Martial Artists not through incentives, or benefits or practicality, but through some degree of patriotic sentiment.
Of course, this was almost entirely ineffective against mature experiences Martial Artists of the higher Realms. The same, however, could not be said for younger Martial Artists of lower Realm, especially Martial Apprentices.
Martial Apprentices accounted for close to ninety-percent of the Martial Artist population. Due to how large a proportion of the Martial Artist they comprised they were the most important Realm of martial Artists in many ways. The Martial Festival was a way just one way of ensuring cultural integration between the more malleable youth of the Martial Artist population with the Empire.
It was also a way to reduce any class conflicts between the civilian population and the Martial Artists. After all, Martial Artists were undoubtedly privileged and blessed to possess the sheer power that they did. It was not uncommon or particularly unlikely for anti-Martial sentiment born out of envy, jealousy and resentment to fester.
It was no different from how the poor felt about the rich.
By celebrating their accomplishments and emphasizing the need for Martial Art, they could keep the friction to a minimum. It did also help that the Martial Union did not accept privately commissioned offense class missions within the boundaries of the Kandrian Empire. Meaning that Martial Artists did not run around hurting and killing the citizens of the Kandrian Empire.
The ordinary average citizen mostly saw Martial Artists protecting people in defense-class missions and protecting people via hunting class missions.
Or enforcing the law during Royal commissions.
"The Martial families compete with each other in the Kandrian Martial Festival?" Rui asked. "That makes sense. It's just not something that occurred to me."
"It isn't publicly announced, I wouldn't expect someone outside the Martial community to know about it." Dalen explained. "Martial Families often train their descendants with the goal of performing highly."
"Huh, that sounds like it sucks." Rui commented. "The Kandrian Martial Festival has always been fun the two times I experienced it, but being trained for it from five years in advance would ruin the experience."
"Kane hates the Martial Festival you know." Dalen laughed. "He's one of the favourites for wins among the current descendants in the Martial Community."
"I see." Rui murmured. "Kane hasn't ever told me about all of this."
"He genuinely hates it, and hates talking about it, more so than most of us." Dalen sighed. "The Festival isn't that far away too, he would do anything needed to avoid participating."
Rui, for one, couldn't wait. The Kandrian Martial Festival had occurred only twice in his entire life, once when he was and the other when he was five and the other when he was ten. Both times he had been too young to join the adults and adolescents as they visited Hajin to take part in the local festival.
He had never expected his first time to experience the Martial Festival would be after he became a Martial Artist himself.
Just the thought of potentially competing with Martial Artists across not just the town, or even the region, but perhaps the entire nation bred an extremely romanticized picture in Rui's head.
"The Kandrian Martial Festival is in less than a year, right?" Rui asked, excitedly.
"Yeah." Dalen turned to glance at him. "Do you intend to participate?"
"Of course!" Rui strongly affirmed. "Why wouldn't I?"
"You don't strike me as someone who cares for glory." Dalen noted. "Or are you interested in the monetary rewards that winning would yield?"
Rui snorted. He didn't care if they glorified it to hell and back or not at all or if they made him a millionare or not. The idea of being able to compete with the best of the best was simply too alluring for Rui to not get excited by.
He needed to get as strong as possible as quickly as possible so that he would be able to fight against stronger Martial Artists, to do that he needed to master these four techniques he had purchased recently as soon as possible.
"Come on, let's continue training." Rui said, brimming with energy.
"Weren't you exhausted just a minute ago?" Dalen asked with confused skepticism.
"Exhaustion is for the weak." Rui declared. "We need to train to get stronger."
"Uh huh." Dalen sighed.
