It hadn't been Rui's intention to try and infiltrate a hunt targeting him, however, when he saw the offer in the Merchant Guild as well as agents of Deacon Industries trying to poach Martial Squires to join a hunting team to target the adventurers who had been responsible for the event, he decided to at least check it out spontaneously.
It hadn't been in his plan to work as a spy, for himself that too, but now that had the opportunity to do so, he didn't see any reason why he shouldn't at least check out the Martial Squires assigned to hunt him.
He had expected that Chairman Deacon would take some measure to stop Rui's dominance on the dungeon floors, still, it hadn't clicked that he could infiltrate it and keep tabs on it.
He highly doubted that they had any chance of tracking him, but it was better to be safe than sorry. As long as it did not take much of his time, he did not particularly lose anything.
"Hmph, it sounds as though you're not very committed to this, Squire Quarrier," Chairman Deacon sternly pointed.
"I'm unable to dedicate all of my time to such an operation unfortunately," He scratched his head, laughing awkwardly. "But I am willing to aid the operation if that is not a problem."
"Your remuneration will also be decided by how committed you are, your contributions to intelligence, and the measures you've undertaken to aid with the objective, is that clear? You will stand to gain far less than those who are entirely committed." He coldly clarified.
"I have no problems as long as I get what I worked for," Rui replied with a pleasant smile. "Will I still have access to logistical and intelligence support even if I am not operating on this mission full-time?"
"That will also depend on your merits," Chairman Deacon replied. He could not be bothered by a low-grade Martial Squire in the first place, he was just answering his questions patiently because other Martial Squires might have the same issue or uncertainty.
"I see," Rui nodded. "In that case, I'm more than willing to be a Voidhunter."
Rui found the name to be amusing and ironic, but he didn't let it show.
"The formal terms and conditions of the contract can be laid out in full later on, however, the most important thing is that there's a mutual understanding of what we expect from each other, and also what a lot of your work will entail," He informed them.
"Murder is illegal in the Shionel Confederation, however, it is not illegal or even considered murder in the Shionel Dungeon, which is the most apt location to kill the target or targets," Chairman Deacon informed them.
He actually didn't give a damn about the location where they eliminated them, but he knew that he wouldn't be able to get away with trying to commit murder. For all he knew, one of them would defect to Guildmaster Bradt, and if the latter found out that Chairman Deacon supported unlawful killing, then he could use that to charge the latter with murder conspiracy, which could land him in hot waters if the guildmaster used his executive power to ensure that Chairman Deacon couldn't wiggle his way out of a thorough investigation and would probably find him guilty. That would give Guildmaster Bradt the ground to use authority to cast Chairman Deacon out of the Shionel Merchant Guild.
If there were a time when he had located and identified the ones responsible for cleaning up the Twelfth floor, and the ones responsible for clearing the second floor, and they were outside the dungeon, then he would straightforwardly deploy his own private Martial Artists to kill him rather than relying on hired mercenaries. There was no way he was going to untrust them if he had a choice.
"Assuming that this entity will be engaging in the same activities for other floors, then there will be plenty of opportunities to find and kill him," Chairman Deacon explained. "According to the Analytics Division of my Deacon Industries, covering as much area with as many Martial Squires in a floor that our target will definitely be aiming for at some point has the highest chances of success."
The biggest problem of the Shionel Dungeon was its sensory jamming that greatly limited the surveillance range of the Martial Squires, otherwise, just five competent Martial Squires would be more than enough to surveil an entire floor.
"Grid searching, maintaining surveillance of a large area is our best choice at the moment," Chairman Deacon informed them. "The chances of you coming into someone whose ability to harvest esoteric resources will be much higher, at that time, please record their appearances to the best of your ability with certain instruments we provide you. Of course, these instruments are also highly limited by the same sensory jamming effect of the Shionel Dungeon, but they will still be able to capture a rough appearance of our target, which instantly increases our chances of identifying them outside of the dungeon."
The reason why the search for their target had stalled was because there was absolutely no tangible information on them, that was why there was no headway to be made.
However, once they had an appearance about their target, then suddenly there was a lot that could be done.
Height, weight, sex, body structure, race, and other factors could be gleaned which could drastically cut down on the pool of suspects. With the suspect pool narrowed down, he could use his considerable resources to then dedicate more thorough investigations into each individual suspect and would be able to further narrow down the suspect pool in time.
That was why Chairman Deacon was willing to go big and aggressive right off the bat, the more he invested immediately, the likelier he was to gain some returns that would allow him to considerably increase the chances of finding and killing his target. He didn't think he was likely to fail.
