"The sooner I land a death blow, the likelier that they will be unable to recuperate. If I act after this new united organization is created and settled in, then eradicating the assassination sector will be that much harder." Rui keenly concluded. "What's the timeline for the development of this new organization?"
"About two weeks." Professor Carl. "That is abnormally fast, but they are aware that they don't have much time left before everything completely unravels and falls apart. They're choosing decisiveness over caution, they can't really afford the luxury of the latter at the moment."
"Hm... It's a shame because that's a tad bit insufficient." Rui winced a little. "Manageable though. I'd need to start making preparations immediately. Are they holding a sort of inauguration ceremony?"
"Just a small announcement speech. They're not big on ceremony, you see."
"Well, are the three Martial Seniors who are sticking around going to be there?"
"Well, yes." Professor Carl replied. "Why?"
"That's perfect," Rui smirked. "I need to go, I have preparations to make."
Two weeks was barely enough time to make super-solid predictive models, it was actually a day short. But Rui was sure he could make do with that slight inadequacy.
He needed to get to work immediately.
In all the reports that he had gotten from the Beggar's Sect, none of them talked about any measures taken to protect the three Martial Seniors from the Voidreaper, aside from temporarily prohibiting them from any operations in the Derschek Region.
'Ah, I see, they think I'm working only in the Derschek Region since I only assassinate in the Derschek Region.' Rui mused. 'Well, they're up for a nasty surprise.'
He needed to turn the Shadow Isles into a place that was truly dangerous to the assassins that it held. And he was going to accomplish that by violently killing all three Martial Seniors.
In front of everybody.
He didn't mind if a fight broke out. That was actually desirable. He needed to cause as much damage to as many unsuspecting assassins and others involved in the assassination industry.
He needed to show them.
Show them what would happen if they continued to remain a part of the sector.
Thankfully, he was a Martial Senior. Causing harm was a specialty he excelled at. The full power of a Martial Senior could do untold damage to a region across a fight. Furthermore, this would be collateral damage, thus the Panamic Martial Federation would have no issue either.
The restrictions that Martial Seniors faced were against active, intentional, and unprovoked hostility against Martial Artists of the Lower Realms. It did not aim to hamper Martial Seniors in pursuing their own peers by also prohibiting collateral damage.
Rui's plan was simple.
Assassinate as many as he could, kill the remaining in a fight. He was not too bothered by the outcome either.
Even a partial success would still most likely accomplish the goal. Even a single assassination would be crushing, because it would mean that Rui could assassinate them even in their own domain of power.
Pursuing the other two and causing mass damage was something that would forever crush any sense of trust, reliance, and dependability of the Shadow Isles. It would display just how weak and vulnerable.
However, this was only as long as he could prepare as much as he possibly could in the next fourteen days.
'Ah, I should warn the Beggar's Sect to withdraw its agents from the Shadow Isles for the time being.' Rui mused.
He did not want to inadvertently harm the Beggar's Sect's people, potentially souring his relationship with his new business partner. Thankfully, they could leave the Shadow Isles without revealing their identities since many people were already leaving, making it easy for them to blend in.
The only issue left was if he could only assassinate one was forced to confront the remaining two.
"Manageable..." Rui murmured.
They were not as weak as Senior Jeanno, and there were two of them. On the other hand, his dominance over the man was extremely high. Not only because he started off at a particularly higher level within the Senior Realm than normal Martial Seniors did, but also because the VOID algorithm was too powerful.
As long as he could form one on both of them, he could potentially defeat both of them at the same time.
Killing three Martial Seniors at once while damaging the Shadow Isles was the best way to completely destroy the assassination sector to its very core. It was already in a very precarious situation, and this would be no different from a death blow.
One good part was that it wasn't as though the three Martial Seniors had great teamwork or anything of the sort.
No. They just happened to be the only three who had decided to stay when everybody else was gone. They didn't have great teamwork which increased Rui's chances of successfully defeating both of them.
Furthermore, the fact that they were primarily covert assassins rather than head-on fighters also worked in his favor. This gave him a solid advantage over them since he was very much specialized for fighting more than he was at assassination.
He had his work cut out in front of him. He just needed to go all out and hope nothing went wrong.
Time passed as the executives and officials of the various organizations furiously worked day and night to get things done in time. Two weeks was an extremely rushed schedule, and they knew it.
It was actually impossible to get everything done even with an insane work schedule. However, they could get just about enough done to present a strong and renewed image to regain control of their depleting assassin reserve then, they would have taken the first step towards stabilizing their situation.
It helped that the Crina Foundation provided them with the support and aid they needed with its seemingly bottomless reserves of wealth and resources. Lady Crina earnestly supported them, allowing them to somehow make it past the hurdles they were beset by.
Soon enough, two weeks passed.
