The Martial Unity

Rui wasn't sure what to make of his first meeting with Master Reina Cara. She had shattered his impression of the legendary Silent Shadow one that nearly everybody had formed about her.

Still, she was the real deal. Knocking out everybody in the Shadow Isles manually just before the attack struck as an additional precaution to make sure that nobody saw her was an absurd feat that Rui had trouble wrapping his mind around.

It was worth partaking in anything she had to offer for him as an assassin. 

He followed her for quite a while within the vast infrastructure of the Area Crina organization before she finally reached an empty room. 

In its center lay a hatch on the ground which she promptly opened with a breathing technique.

Rui's eyes widened as his senses peered into an enormous cavity underground that the hatch led down to. However, he hadn't been able to sense the cavity underground with his regular senses at all.

It wasn't that it was being jammed with anti-sensory esoteric substances, he would have been able to sense the jamming, his senses had previously sensed pure bedrock until she opened the hatch and a giant underground gravity was revealed.

"Incredible, isn't it?" She smirked. 

"But how...?" Rui murmured. 

"It's actually lined with an esoteric substance that, to the senses, 'acts' like bedrock." She explained. "Anyone below a certain level who tries to sense the cavity will sense pure bedrock. It's being disguised rather than concealed. You won't believe how difficult it was to create this cavity without anyone noticing, but it's the perfect place."

Rui's eyes narrowed as he grew immersed in thought. That was an incredible way of hiding something that big. He had a degree that covered esoteric material science thus he had heard of substances that warped one's perception of reality, however, this was his first time actually coming across them.

He followed her down the hole, sky-walking until they hit the ground.

"Tada." The elderly woman gestured with her arms. "What do you think?

The underground cavity turned out to be a remarkably wide open space equipped with all kinds of esoteric machines as far as the eye could see. It was like a super training chamber.

"Quite incredible that you managed to get this done without the Beggar's Sect finding out." Rui nodded. 

"Heh." She smirked with a hint of pride. 

"So where do we begin?" Rui asked. "What kind of technique are you going to teach me?"

"Impatient, aren't you?" She tutted. "Before we begin with the training. I have several questions I have for you."

"Ask away."

"You already know the truth about the Master Realm, do you?" She asked with a knowing glance.

"No," Rui shook his head. 

"Really?" She furrowed her eyebrows, confused. 

"Yes."

"Hm, that's strange."

"Why would that be strange?" Rui sighed. "You're the first Martial Master I've met since breaking through to the Senior Realm."

She simply stared at him with her unfathomable eyes, peering into the depths of his. "Quite incredible."

"Will you inform about the breakthrough to the Master Realm?"

She stared at him for a few moments, before shaking her head. "No, I've decided against it for now. There are many things that I need to pass on to you while you're here, I can't have you being absorbed in such an important matter, I'll leave that burden for someone else."

"Right." Rui sighed. "What do you wish to pass on to me?"

"A proper foundation, you see." She remarked. "You have already developed a powerful assassination technique. However, that does not mean you are a solid assassin. You're closer to a one-trick pony who has yet to come across someone truly stronger than you. There's a lot more to the art of killing than having a powerful technique."

Rui furrowed his eyebrows. He knew that she wasn't wrong. Death's Sympathy hardly covered all bases as an assassin. He had a lot of gaping wide holes compared to assassins.

"Spending a week tailing your target from a distance while having musicians play songs with all kinds of notes near them to test the responses of their bodies to the sound..." She paused, glancing at him. "Do you really think you'll get to do that each time you want to kill a target? Particularly powerful, well-protected, and obscured targets? Hah, if only life were so convenient."

She paused for a moment. "Most powerful individuals wear clandestine protective gear based on esoteric technology that can protect them continuously. Martial Artists don't do that, of course, since they generally don't need to, except in niche cases like yours. That was why you were able to get away with killing them continuously. Not only did none of them suspect that you were killing them with a truly esoteric Squire-level technique, but none of them had access to such protective gear even if they did come to know. It's quite rare and expensive to procure."

Rui narrowed his eyes. "That's news to me."

"That's because you haven't even gotten around to trying to kill someone powerful." She replied. "The point I'm trying to make is that you crafted the technique for these circumstances, and they work fine in these circumstances. But once circumstances change, your technique becomes less effective and practical. For one, you shouldn't underestimate the senses of Martial Seniors who are close to the peak of the Senior Realm, I would be surprised if you could get away with them what do you did with the Shadow Isles."

She paused for a moment before continuing. "Assassination is not exclusively a field of Martial Art, it's a field of operations that involves much more than Martial Art. If you want to kill whoever you want to kill, you should develop the foundation of what it takes. Given how quickly you developed a powerful technique to kill the Martial Seniors of the Shadow Isles, you are adaptable enough to build upon that foundation to take out whoever you want, so that should be enough."

Rui nodded. "Alright then, where do we start?"

"Theory comes before practice. There are things that you need to know before we can begin."