Word spread through the Gereign Region.
"The Carnil Mafia and the Vale Syndicate have entered a cold war."
As of yet, hostilities had not been broken out. However, everyone even remotely informed could sense the friction.
Competition over resources, trade routes, and skirmishes. These things all pointed to a broader underlying tension.
Yet none of them knew that the origin of this tension was two red herrings created by a mastermind that had foreseen all of this.
Rui, on the other hand, did not care.
He had planted seeds of conflict because they had been worth the effort. If they panned out into a grand fire, that was great.
If they merely smoldered, that too was fine.
He was much more focused on something else.
The combat data of the three high-grade Martial Seniors in the Gereign base of the Carnil Mafia.
When he revised all the information that the Beggar's Sect had on them…
"They're goddamn monsters," Rui grinned.
Senior Zenshin, the Veritable Tiger.
His Martial Body had been geared towards absolute offense and power.
His claws had been honed and sharpened for three hundred years.
According to the Beggar's Sect, his claws were so sharp, that they would create sparks and crackles of lightning when he clawed through the air.
Rui's eyes widened. 'He can create plasma just by swiping his claws? Is he splitting molecules into atoms? Just how absurdly sharp are they?!'
Rui couldn't even imagine how sharp they were if they were progressively sharpening over the span of three hundred years. There were some things that could only be gained through dedicated perseverance for mind-bogglingly long periods.
The more Rui read about him, the more he became wary of the sheer peril that Senior Zenshin possessed.
His piercing attacks were decisively fatal. Rui suspected that the piercing attacks could probably hurt him even if Senior Zenshin didn't use his Martial Heart
With it? He could probably split Rui in half.
'And despite this, he is still only a grade-thirteen Martial Senior,' Rui laughed.
That meant that there were two grades of Martial Seniors who were above even Senior Zenshin.
There probably were a small group of elites who could crush even Senior Zenshin.
'The Senior Realm is definitely wider than the Squire Realm.' Rui clenched his fist, trying to suppress his excitement. 'I already knew this, but actually seeing the vastness of this Realm leaves one speechless.'
He had yet to be pushed to his absolute limits in a fight. Not even the mid-grade Martial Seniors who were on the upper end of the mid-grade had been able to push Rui to go all out. Currently, his Martial Art had three oases of power within it.
The Pattern Recognition System.
The Metabody System.
The Hypnomatrix.
Usually, he needed only one, or at most, two to beat the mid-grade Martial Seniors of the Carnil Mafia.
Never had he been forced to use all three against any Martial Senior.
However, he knew that at the bare minimum, he would be forced to use all three against high-grade Martial Seniors.
'Huff… In truth, this isn't even the most optimal way to deal with them," Rui heaved a sigh. 'I could probably manipulate even more forces if I wanted to mount even more political pressure. Then I could just incentivize them to take attack and take over if the vulnerability of the current Gereign Base was revealed.'
However, he ultimately decided to not take out the high-grade Martial Seniors in this manner.
The reason was simple.
'I need to fight them.' A small grin cracked at the edge of his mouth. 'I want to fight them.'
That was the truth. He had grown a lot since his last fight to his limit. It had been more than four years since he fought the Martial Senior of the child trafficking ring in the Saiful Region. That was the last time a Martial Senior had pushed him to his limit when he was able to fight freely and all-out.
He needed to know his precise limit.
He also wanted to extensively break in his Martial Art with some experience. Experience was the foundation of growth. Anybody who didn't temper one's Martial Art with experience would cease to grow.
'It's like building a tower. The taller the tower, the stronger the foundations of the tower need to be at each level. Each floor needs to be strong enough to bear the weight of all the floors above it, otherwise, the tower will break.'
It was no different from how every development project, no matter if it was physical or software, needed to be tested rigorously countless times before it was deemed to be ready.
Physical structures needed to be pressure tested thoroughly at every stage before progressing to the next stage.
Programming projects needed to be run and debugged at every step.
What would happen if these processes were skipped?
The end result would be highly flawed, useless, and even harmful.
Rui had no intentions of skipping this process. He had made a lot of gains in the past years, and now it was time to temper them. Like a blacksmith beating the impurities out of a metal while increasing the tensile strength of a blade.
That was why he chose to go through with this.
Merely four hours later, Rui found himself standing before one of the three high-grade Martial Seniors of the Carnil Mafia deep in the Great Forest of Hypnonarak.
"I expected that this day would come," A woman remarked, staring at a masked Rui. "I am the youngest of the three elites at the Gereign Base. Still, the fact that you have evaluated me to be the weakest of my peers is displeasing."
Her eyes sharpened.
RUMBLE!
The very land shook as if responding to her rage.
Rui simply stared at her wordlessly, taking his stance.
"You will regret underestimating me," She declared as she clapped her hands.
'Dominion Art; World of Chaos.'
Rui's eyes widened as the ground below him sank and the forest around him erupted in a tsunami, looking to swallow him.
"Repent in hell," Her eyes flashed with bloodlust.
