"Have you all heard about the royal address?"
"My, how could I have not? It appears that, on his deathbed, His Majesty the Emperor will surely be passing on his wisdom to the royals, to the emperors and empresses of the future."
"Sounds boring."
"Agreed. I'm glad I don't have to attend such a boring event!"
"Do not look down on it; it's an important event."
"Ah, Damia! Don't play with your food."
Rui smiled wryly as his eyes wandered across the table.
Fae had organized a short get-together, inviting Kane, Fiona, Nel, Hever, Milliana, and Dalen to an evening gathering at a place in the town of Hajin.
"It's a shame that the Emperor of Harmony may not be the emperor for too long," Fiona heaved a sigh. "I can only imagine the chaos that will ensue after he passes away."
"It will be a rough and uncertain time for the Kandrian Empire," Fae heaved a sigh. "We can only hold tight and hope for the best."
"Boring!" Nel grumbled out aloud. "Kane, let's spar again!"
"No," Kane snorted.
"Why not?!"
"Go train if you have time to spar with me."
"Fighting is more fun."
"Enough, you two," Hever calmly quelled the spat.
"Hever will you...?"
"I'm too busy..."
"My, is there anything that goes in your head except for fighting?" Fae shook her head with disapproval before turning around the table. "So, what has everybody been up to these days?"
Hever replied, earning a grumble from Nel. "I have recently received a commission to serve as the bodyguard of the mayor of the town of Hulfrum, due tomorrow. I cannot let slip the opportunity to add this to my track record and career."
A wave of impressed murmurs spread through the table.
"Wow, congratulations on the placement!" Fiona's eyes sparkled. "As for my recent doings...I was recently authorized to lead an expedition in the Freiva Mountain Range. It's a quasi-Squire-level danger zone in the east part of the Beast Domain."
"To be authorized as an expedition leader at your age is quite remarkable," Dalen admitted.
"Hehe...praise me more!"
"I was recently appointed to head of security of the Verain Village in the Mantian Region," Dalen smiled. "It pays decently, and it's close to home, and I'm protecting my family simultaneously. Couldn't ask for more."
He smiled affectionately as he fed his infant daughter with a spoon. Milliana had been pregnant about two years ago when Rui had first returned to the Kandrian Empire; since then, she and her husband had been busy raising the infant baby.
"The only exciting thing I went through recently was this offensive operation commissioned by a government official on a drug-bust operation; it turned out to be a crucial supply chain with a huge drug yield, and I managed to apprehend an important drug dealer in the drug-trafficking business in the town of Brillix, I was personally commended by His Highness Prince Raijun himself!" Fae said proudly.
This earned a particularly outsized reaction among friends.
"From the Martial Prince himself? That's pretty impressive," Kane remarked as he took a bite from his sandwich. "I haven't met him yet. I was considering joining his faction."
"You can do that; after all, Her Highness Princess Rafia proposed marriage to you," Fae flashed an icy smile that didn't reach her eyes. "You should accept her as your sugar mommy."
"I told you that I rejected her!" Kane complained. "Come on, can we forget about that already…"
"Kane has been busy courting a Kandrian princess!"
The table burst into laughter.
"Haha, very funny," Kane grumbled. "I'm too busy grinding missions for experience with the Senior Realm and accruing enough credits to purchase a Lightning Serpent potion to make out with a princess."
Kane, having sparred with Rui routinely, had been thoroughly amazed by how much stronger Rui had become with the Roaring Dragon Blood Potion. He had resolved himself to purchasing a potion that improve his speed and agility.
"So what have you been up to, Rui?"
The question was innocuous and sincere, yet it had caught him off-guard.
Suddenly, everybody was looking at him.
"Ah…" Rui smiled wryly. "You know. Stuff."
This conversation made him feel surreal.
It highlighted how he was worlds, even universes, apart from Martial Artists his age, let alone people his age. His friends talked boisterously about careers, occupations, promotions, commissions, jobs, and a variety of things that were so disconnected from what he was dealing with and used to dealing with.
Their dreams, ambitions, and objectives were objectively not even in the same order of magnitude of impact as his.
He envied them even as it became increasingly difficult for him to relate to them. He found it hard to engage with and reciprocate with them.
What had he been up to?
In the past two years, he had presented a seminar for the Hungry Pain technique that led to the Martial Union adopting the technique on a national scale, increasing the power of new Martial Squires by fifty percent on average across the entire nation, resulting in a dramatic growth in power at the lowest level that would eventually snowball into a huge amount of power, altering the power dynamics of all of East Panama.
He had formed an agreement that produced a power imbalance in the Kandrian Throne War that could very well affect the future of all of Kandria and, consequently, all of East Panama.
He had been inducted as a constituent of the Kandrian Fiscal Committee and then went on to plant the seeds of a new sect, earning thirty-one trillion Martial Credits for the techniques that he had created. Techniques that would increase the probability of Master breakthroughs, substantially increasing Kandria's power.
Having earned the ire of the royals, he then went on to scheme a clever strategy to sabotage their assassination, gain leverage, and eventually complete control over them, gaining the power of kingmaker in the Kandrian Empire.
And now, the weight of Kandria's future was on his shoulders. The decision he was to make would alter the future of not just the Kandrian Empire but, to a certain extent, all of human civilization.
"Stuff?" Fae raised an eyebrow.
"Yeah…" He smiled bitterly. "Stuff."
