The Martial Unity

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"Well, let me look at some other options before I decide." he shrugged.

He skimmed through his inbox, carefully going through the other missions.

The kinds of missions in his inbox were diverse. The most common class of missions he got was the defense-class missions followed by the hunter-class and finally; the offense-class missions. The offense-class missions were the fewest due to the restriction of offense-class missions

Eventually, he stopped, shaking his head.

"It's not that these missions aren't good, they're just not new or interesting to me." Rui murmured.

It had been nearly two years since he had begun completing missions, and he had gained plenty of experience in the offense, defense, hunter, and miscellaneous classes of missions. The only missions truly outside of his experience were the Beast Domain and the shadow-class missions.

Although he certainly intended to try his hand at shadow-class missions, for now, he wanted missions that would put him in head-on straightforward conflict. This way he could bolster his current Martial Art with experience.

Even if the Beast Domain mission was a surveillance mission, the fact that it was the Beast Domain and was a grade nine mission meant that the mission was certainly going to put him to the test. Normally, grade nine missions were too easy for someone of his caliber, but that applied to human missions. The VOID algorithm's incompatibility with non-human conflict meant that he would have a harder time with this mission than he would for any other human mission of the same grade.

That on top of the fact that he would be visiting the Beast Domain for the first time made it the most alluring mission in his inbox at the moment.

"Alright. Screw it, let's go ahead with it." He shrugged. It wasn't like he wouldn't get a chance to undergo the other kinds of missions. He was one of the most sought-after Martial Apprentices in the Kandrian Empire. Commissions would flood him regardless of whether he wanted them or not. Furthermore, the Martial union received a huge influx of commissions from across the country and from a large number of foreign nations surrounding the Kandrian Empire in the geographic vicinity.

He headed back to the commissions' department, approaching the support staff.

"Excuse me." Rui addressed them. "I wish to officially accept a commission that was recommended to me by the Martial Union."

He said as he showed them the commission that he wanted to accept, as well as all the details.

"Just one moment." She said taking down the details before operating her digital terminal. "Please provide me with your Martial license."

Rui reached for his pouch as he procured the shiny glistening license card and passed it over to her. His learner's Martial license had already been upgraded to a full-fledged Martial license when he graduated from the Martial Academy.

"It'll require you to sign some paperwork, sir." She told him as she passed him a thin stack of paper.

Rui sped through as he sped through the forms filling up the details that needed to be filled while signing the places that needed to be signed.

"Everything is in order." She nodded after verifying the papers that he returned, before stamping all of them with the seal of the Martial Union. "You are now the registered Martial Artist designated to this commission. Kindly wait as the mission bill is procured by our staff."

Rui nodded. It wasn't long before he was seated at one of the tables engrossed in the missions bill of the commission.

"Alright now," Rui muttered. "Let's get a closer look at this baby."

The mission bill gave him the context behind the commission after the basic details.

The Serevian Plateau was a part of the outermost layer of the Beast Domain that made contact with and even infiltrated into human civilization. It was a flat plain that extended tens of thousands of square kilometers. It was sort of a pocket of uninhabited natural land that had penetrated into the human domain and was somewhat far from the Kandrian Empire geographically, to the point that it was equally close to the other three first-world nations geographically.

This meant that if Rui accepted this mission, he would be traveling further away from the Kandrian Empire than he ever had. This was an exciting notion for him, he looked forward to being so distant from the Kandrian Empire for the very first time.

He turned back to the mission bill as he continued reading.

The Serevian Plateau was topographically flat and even, as plateaus always were. The minimum combat prowess capability required to survive in the Serevian Plateau was grade seven, as evaluated by the Martial union and the Ministry of Ecology and Environment, the clientele of the commission.

Rui raised his eyes at those words. ('Grade seven is the bare minimum needed to survive?')

He frowned. In ordinary natural habitats that weren't considered part of the Beast Domain, grade-seven Martial Apprentices would be usually at the very top of the food chain. Yet even in the outermost and safest parts of the Beast Domain, they were just marginally able to survive in the Beast Domain?

Rui recalled when he was a grade-seven Martial Apprentice, he had been quite impressive by general standards back then and had been able to reach the finals of the Martial Contest.

('The Beast Domain must be built different.') He noted while his eyes lit up with eagerness. He moved on after absorbing the general information on the Serevian Plateau, reaching the actual point of the commissions.

The Serevian Plateau had very recently experienced a rather bizarre and abrupt change in several ecological and environmental parameters including migration patterns, seismic radiation, temperature, and even weather.

Drastic changes in these parameters in a rather brief period of time were quite confusing and puzzling to the Ministry of Environment and Ecology which also overlooked the uninhabited natural habitats and environments anywhere even remotely within the geographic vicinity of the Kandrian Empire.