The simplest and most straightforward method was a direct and head-on approach of manually interrogating the townsfolks, asking them about the men he was pursuing.
Of course, he immediately scratched that course of action out of his mind. It had a low probability of succeeding and a high probability of alerting Faraday Lowminer of his presence. If he realized that someone was in town looking for him, then he would simply vanish like the wind, in all likelihood.
Thus, Rui had to take a more indirect approach to capture.
('First, what would lead me to him in the first place?') He asked himself.
He could either obtain the information directly by extracting the information from someone who did know his exact location or indirectly by following a trail that would lead him to Faraday. No matter how well he hid, as long as he was running an operation of any kind that made him money of any kind, he was inevitably connected to arrows that pointed in his direction.
Even if he distanced himself from everything, he would need people managing his operations on his behalf. These people would most certainly be required to be physically at the site of the base of operations, overseeing inventory, schedule, supplies, processing, and shipments. The base of operations could be tracked via the influx and outflux of funds, and the influx and outflux of goods.
However, this was the avenue of intelligence gathering that the intelligence department of the Martial Union was responsible for.
And so far, they had done a good job with the intelligence that they had managed to obtain.
Faraday Lowminer had already long set up the foundation for a base of operations in another state even before he escaped the Kandrian Empire, according to the intelligence that the Martial Union had provided to Rui.
The man had not hurriedly set up a new base of operation but simply went all-out with an existing base of operations.
The intelligence that the Martial Union managed to dig up was more specific, of course. The man had set up a drug trafficking and selling business. The esoteric kind, the kind that was illegal and heavily penalized.
It made sense, he was once in the esoteric resources-supplying industry, the legitimate one. He had no choice but to delve into the underworld once he was ousted by the Kandrian Empire.
The Kandrian Empire had an extradition treaty with almost all states in the geographic surroundings of the country. Meaning he couldn't just travel to another state and set up shop and continue with a legitimate business. He would either need to travel extremely far to do that, in nations he had very little exposure to and understanding of. Or choose to remain in a part of the Panama Continent he was more familiar with.
The Martial Union had done a good job trying to narrow his location down soon after his escape, meaning his plan had come close to failing. The intelligence department could easily narrow down his location by tracking exchanges in funds and tracking down the movement of the illegal esoteric drugs that he was receiving and supplying.
However, that only worked as far as narrowing down the general location of his base of operations. It took more time to pinpoint it.
Rui did not intend to try and aid the intelligence gathering by following in their footsteps. While analyzing the flow of money and drugs was certainly useful, he wouldn't be able to add much value as dedicated experts and specialists were already on the job.
Sure, he wouldn't be useless, but was it really his most effective and efficient way to find his target?
('The intelligence analysts can do what they do best, I intend to do the same.')
His operations weren't the only way he could be traced.
The fact that he had a band of Martial Apprentices was another opening through which Rui could trace his location. Rui could easily detect whether a person was a Martial Apprentice or not. Furthermore, the Kingdom of Violis most certainly did not have anywhere near as many Martial Apprentices as the Kandrian Empire.
The town of Garten was unlikely to contain a large number of Martial Apprentices. As long as he latched on to each of them one by one, he would inevitably have found himself on a trail back to his target.
Rui intended to go down the list of all Martial Apprentices in town that he detected and verify whether they were one of Faraday's men. If it was true that Faraday's base of operations was based in the town of Garten, then it was quite likely the case that all of the Martial Apprentices were also inhabiting the town of Garten.
It wouldn't be quick or easy, but it was quite a reliable plan. He had computed several other plans as well, of course, but given his circumstances and capabilities, none of them were nearly as reliable as this one.
Furthermore, it was a plan that extremely few Martial Squires, including Rui, could complete. The plan would require the ability to sense Martial Apprentices within a reasonably wide area, otherwise, it would take far too long and was far too unreliable. Rui was able to sense Martial Apprentices within a wide area thanks to the presence of both Primordial Instinct and the Mindmirror brain augmenting it. There were very few who could accurately detect Martial Apprentices over a wider area the way Rui could.
Even if some of the Martial Apprentices that Faraday was employing had high stealth capabilities, it wouldn't matter because there were several others who Rui could use to lead him back to Faraday. There were very few things that could go wrong with the plan as long as Rui was careful and cautious.
He immediately began solidifying the details of his approach as he fleshed out the plan. Details such as how would he come to eventually verify whether a Martial Apprentice he was tracking was a target or not, or how far he should track them from, and other important details.
