"You're saying Apprentice Ian Nepomniachtchi attacked you amidst the mission?" Commissioner Feristen asked him, frowning.
"Yes, commissioner Feristen." Rui nodded. "He insisted it was an accident, but the explanation he provided was implausible. I also sensed his lie as a master of the Primordial Instinct technique and Mindmirror Symbiote. He also has the motive to do something like this."
"And what motive might that be?" Commissioner Feristen asked him.
"I defeated him in the Martial Contest last year, he did not take it well and has maintained a grudge by all accounts," Rui explained.
"Is that all you have?" Commissioner Feristen asked. "I'm afraid you've offered nothing but your word."
"I can't be expected to provide more," Rui replied. "I'm not asking for an investigation or even for justice. However, it would be appreciated if you could place us in different missions."
"I do not make the decision of assigning Martial Apprentices their particular missions. Those are made back home by the higher-ups. Nevertheless, I can put the word of your complaint back to the higher-ups, though I can't guarantee that your wish will get fulfilled."
"I see, then please do that." Rui nodded. "Thank you."
He bade commissioner Feristen goodbye before leaving the office, sighing. This was about as far as he could go in regard to relying on his superiors to solve the problem. The Martial Apprentices had just returned and filled in a report, submitting it. Rui had decided to take the time of contacting commissioner Feristen and informing him about Ian.
For now, he put the matter aside.
The Kandrian Empire's territorial expansion was going remarkably well. Rui had heard rumors that another team of Martial Apprentices had been brought in to bolster the defenses of the expanded area. The Kandrian Empire had set a minimum Martial Artist per unit area ratio in order to ensure that the territory could be adequately defended.
Rui's face lit up in elation when he ran into a friendly face.
"Hever!" Rui called out to him. "It's been a while!"
"Indeed it has." Hever calmly replied.
"You're part of the defensive squad, I'm guessing?" Rui asked him.
"Indeed."
"Figured." Rui nodded.
Hever's Martial Art was fundamentally counter-offensive, he didn't have a single actively offensive bone in his body. His being part of the offensive squad would be a brain-dead decision on the part of the higher-ups.
"I heard your assault mission was successful," Hever told him. "How did it go? What were the Martial Artists of the foreign nation like?"
"It went well," Rui replied. "The Martial Artists of the Kingdom of Nochus were frankly several notches below than the Martial Apprentices of the Kandrian Empire. Their Martial Art were much more generic and grounded, and they didn't possess counters for a lot of the more exotic Martial Art techniques that the Martial Apprentices of the Kandrian Empire showed."
"Seems like the Martial Apprentices of large nations are more than just a little favored by virtue of being born in more powerful nations," Hever noted.
Rui nodded. "The quality of the techniques of Martial Art is very important, the visible power gap between the Martial Artists could be entirely explained by the difference in the quality of the Martial foundations between the nations. I don't think the defensive squad has much to worry about, there are only smaller nations in our vicinity. None of the super nations' core territories are even remotely close to ours, relatively speaking."
"Still, we need to be careful. Eventually, the territory of the Kandrian Empire will expand significantly until it covers swathes of the Serevian Dungeon." Hever noted. "When that time comes, direct conflict at the very border of the Kandrian Empire will be inevitable. The defensive squad's merit will be truly tested when that happens."
"True." Rui nodded. "None of the smaller nations will attack the Kandrian Empire's territory unless absolutely necessary. Only the other three fellow super-nations such as the Sekigahara Confederate, the Republic of Gorteau and the Britannian Empire have the power to do something like that, but the territories of these nations were not particularly close to each other.
In fact, the core territories of the four nations were nearly as far away from each other as possible. This wasn't done by accident, there was a very strong reason that the four nations each placed their core territories at the most distant part of the Serevian Dungeon.
The closer the core territories of the super-nations were with each other, the greater the conflict the nations would have to be subjected to for otherwise the same number of resources. There was no point in having the nations close to each other only for the nations to immediately engage in tumultuous conflict.
By giving each other the wide distance that they would each like, each nation could freely expand in the Serevian Dungeon with only the weaker nations and the many fauna life forms in the Serevian Dungeon impeding their progress. Neither could compete with the super-nations.
The Kandrian Empire's plan was to expand aggressively and comfortably as fast as possible while being restricted by the necessity of closing all the underground cave networks in their new territory while also eliminating the many low-level Apprentice-level lifeforms that existed in the Serevian Dungeon in their newly seized territory every time they expanded it.
The problems would begin when the territory of the Kandrian Empire would eventually hit the territories of the other super-nations despite the massive distance between them, simply due to the sheer expansion that all the super-nations would eventually complete.
When that happened, the only land that would remain uncolonized would be the core of the Serevian Dungeon. None of the twelve nations had placed their core territory in the center of the Serevian Dungeon, there were simply too many disadvantages to such a decision. The territory would face stiff competition from every direction. Furthermore, the territory would be boxed out of the border of the Serevian Dungeon making it impossible to receive supply shipments from their home states.
