The Martial Unity

Rui began forming the skeleton of a plan, though he was still far from fleshing out the details. Several facts had been established. He was going for an active and direct assassination, not an indirect one. Chairman Deacon was highly prepared for both, thus it made more sense to go for the kind of assassination he was greatly competent at.

He also had to admit, a small part of the reason for this decision was that he wanted to do the deed in person.

He also decided on a close-range assassination rather than a long-range one. Chairman Deacon had taken more than the necessary protective measures to make sniping him with Death's Sympathy unviable.

Another decision he had made was that the assassination needed to be carried out away from a population center. He was unwilling to kill millions of innocent people to get rid of Chairman Deacon, especially when he knew it could be done otherwise.

The end decision was to go for a close-range direct assassination ambush while the man was traveling outside of the Shionel Confederation. This was the best way to kill him considering the circumstances and his own capabilities.

Naturally, it was not going to be easy. Predictive model or not, killing eight Martial Seniors was going to be exceedingly difficult. Furthermore, he was unable to use the Greater Phantomind Void and the VOID algorithm simultaneously. And for this assassination, he almost certainly needed both.

'First, I need to look through some more information,' Rui noted. 'The Beggar's Sect gives me as much information as there is on the Martial Seniors, but it's nowhere near enough for a predictive model, so I'll need to handle that myself. In addition, I need to ascertain his travel plans well in advance in order to plan this out. Thankfully, both of these are possible.'

The Beggar's Sect's information package contained his general travel schedule, but it was best for Rui to verify the fact of the man's travel plans surrounding the particular traveling journey during which Rui planned to kill him.

Ideally, it was best for him to pick an isolated spot along the journey just to minimize the variable of human interference screwing his plan up.

Once he found a good spot along a common travel route that Chairman Deacon frequented, and also finished the predictive models for each of the Senior bodyguards, then it would finally be time to execute the assassination and be done with this matter forever.

'Thankfully, figuring out a good travel journey is easy. The man travels to the Kandrian Empire regularly, there is a huge distance between the two nations and I'm sure I can find plenty of spots,' Rui noted.

He scoured through the rest of the information package, taking note of other important things that he needed to be wary of. One particularly important thing that he needed to keep in mind was the scout unit that accompanied Chairman Deacon's travel convoy each time. This was a unit of sensory Martial Artists who were dedicated to ensuring that there were no traps or ambushes waiting for Chairman Deacon.

It was a unit that consisted of many Martial Squires with highly developed senses. Of course, Rui was not too concerned about this. Not even Senior Nereau, a Martial Senior with two grade-ten sensory techniques had been able to glean past his Greater Phantomind Void.

Rui's affinity for mental techniques was of the same caliber as Kane's affinity for maneuvering techniques. He estimated that he was likely above even highly talented mind-oriented Martial Seniors whose entire Squire breakthrough evolution process was greatly centered around the brain. This was because the natural and organic evolution of the mind from birth to adulthood was superior to even the artificial evolution process of the Squire breakthrough procedure.

The probability of a Martial Squire detecting him was precisely zero.

'I have a pretty decent plan, but very preparation-heavy. Chairman Deacon has a platoon of bodyguards that he rotates through. About twelve of them, I need to form predictive models on all of them just to be sure, not to mention learning their resonant frequencies. This is going to take some time,' Rui heaved a sigh.

Of course, he could definitely minimize that getting the resonant frequencies and predictive models for only the Martial Seniors who would participate as bodyguards on the day of the assassination, but he would need to calculate that based on their shifts and the date. Furthermore, if there was a hiccup, then he would be screwed.

'I need to be meticulous and immaculate. And patient more than anything,' Rui decided. 'I've waited more than seven years for this. If it takes a few more weeks of preparation or more, then so be it. There's no point in fucking up and possibly letting those seven years go to waste.'

He took a deep breath as he resolved himself. He would probably require the Beggar's Sect's aid just a little more, but he didn't have time to fulfill large time-consuming operations for them anymore. 'Maybe a few small operations here and there, at most,' Rui knew. After all, hiring a musician to play all kinds of notes around his targets was easy. As a Martial Senior, even a minute of his time was exponentially more valuable than an entire day's worth of time of a musician. Such was the value that a living tactical nuclear missile represented. "Time to get started with Operation Bloodhound Hunter."

And get started he did. Unfortunately, it had taken him longer than he had expected. From negotiating a few short bodyguard operations for the Beggar's Sect for their cooperation regarding certain matters, to stalking the bodyguards of Chairman Deacon when they were off-duty with Phantomind Void, to scouting locations across his travel route from the Shionel Confederation to the Kandrian Empire that were fit for the assassination, to running simultations of the battle in his head and computing probability of success.

It took him a whopping three months before he was finally ready.