In an age of Martial Art, Martial Artists were undoubtedly given a lot of attention and importance. In the eyes of sovereign states, Martial Artists were walking strategic weapons. They were no different from living tanks, jets, bombs, and missiles that had their own interests and agendas.
Martial Squires, among them, held a somewhat unique place. They were strong enough to be important and of great strategic importance, while also just enough that their numbers made them formidable, but not too many that they could not be individually treated as valued assets.
And only irresponsible fools treated valued assets without care and caution. It was impossible for a Martial Squire to up and leave the nation without some repercussions or measures being employed by states. Rui was smart enough to know that Kane's hopes of leaving the country, cutting all ties, and living a peaceful and blissful life were far-fetched, and the price to be paid for success was high.
"I'm curious though," Rui asked while Kane considered his words. "All this talk about the feasibility of fleeing and hiding made me think of an obvious solution; Why do you still need to be protected from your family? Your Martial Path is not suited for the Fire Sect, but now even your Martial body isn't suitable for the Fire Sect. It isn't like your family will kill you now, or destroy your future, so why not try to reconcile?"
Kane snorted. "The Fire Sect isn't the one that is after me. It's my family. Yes, it's true that my father leads the Fire Sect, but he isn't employing the power and the influence of the Fire Sect to try and reign me in, he's employing his own personal influence and power and that of the Arrancar Family. The reason the Lightning Sect treats it as the Fire Sect infringing on me, even though this isn't the case, is because that's how it looks like to everyone else."
Rui quickly understood all the nuances of what Kane was trying to convey.
"The Arrancar Family isn't strictly associated with the Fire Sect, then?"
"Not exclusively, no. Ultimately, while Martial Paths can be subtly and indirectly influenced over a lifetime of the most gentle and subtle conditioning, it cannot be controlled and there is always a perfectly plausible possibility that the child of a certain Martial Family may end up having a Martial Path that is very different from that of what the family desired." Kane explained. "This is something that the Martial community has long learned and accepted. Thus, my having an evasive maneuvering-oriented Martial Path isn't enough for my family to forget about me. This is not an uncommon occurrence, and no Martial Family is willing to let go of a genius Martial Squire who discovered his Martial Path at the age of eleven just because their Martial Path diverges from that of the Family head."
"I see, that makes sense." Rui nodded.
His interaction and exposure to the Martial community were limited. At most, he got glimpses of it in the Martial Games held by the DiVilier Family. This caused him to have a limited understanding of how things worked in the Martial community, as opposed to Kane who spent his whole life in the ecosystem, no doubt.
"Well, then maybe you should consider running away." Rui thought out aloud.
"Didn't you just advise against it?" Kane frowned.
"I just warned you of the difficulty and the price that you need to pay, most likely, to succeed." Rui shook his head. "I never said it was a bad choice. Who knows, you might end up enjoying the solitude that comes from suppressing your Martial Artist status forever and leaving a simple life in a remote place."
Kane's expression fell upon hearing that. "This shit is rough."
"That it is." Rui nodded.
"Sometimes I'm really quite envious of you, you know?" Kane sighed. "Your life sounds awesome."
"It definitely has been thus far." Rui nodded. "Though what you disdain, I envy as well. I wonder how early I might have broken through had I the training and growth resources that you had, growing up."
Potions and other training resources were a huge boon in getting stronger. While Rui made do with what he could, it wasn't the same. He didn't even have proper training and sparring partners. The adults had always been too busy to play around with him for too long, while the other kids in the Quarrier Orphanage were nowhere near what Kane had. They could at best take elementary roles in aiding his development and growth.
He couldn't even properly train in boxing and Brazilian Jiu-jitsu and other martial arts that went into training MMA, because he didn't have the time to train them on how to help him train!
Rui estimated that he very well could have discovered his Martial Path much earlier, perhaps not as early as Kane, but certainly earlier than he did. Definitely, before he entered the Martial Academy.
Of course, it was true that the suffocating and unpleasant environment of the Arrancar Family was probably nightmarish and torturous to children, but Rui wasn't a child.
However, despite that, he would probably choose to be reborn in the Quarrier Orphanage even if he did have a chance to change that. That's because they had already long solidified their place in his heart as family. It was hard to imagine a world where that wasn't the case.
Even if it wasn't particularly conducive to maximizing the rate of his growth, no matter how important his Martial Art was to him, he didn't want to forsake them. The memories that he had formed in his childhood would stay with him forever.
"What do you plan to do from here on out?" Rui asked.
He wanted to know what Kane would do in the short-term timeframe, and also in the long term. There was probably nothing he could afford to change in the meantime, he was simply too weak. He had just become a Martial Squire and was sorely unqualified to execute any radical plans.
