The Martial Unity

The wyvern scampered off in fear. Armed with predictive and SOUL models, Rui bore an air of aura that did not quite fit within the Senior Realm. Twenty-two wyverns might have the confidence to fight him, but alone, they certainly didn't.

Kane fell to the ground, coughing blood.

"Kane!" Rui urgently pulled out healing potions, feeding them to him.

"Heh…" Kane grinned weakly as he slowly healed. "I managed to stall one."

Rui heaved a troubled sigh. "I warned you. I warned you this could happen."

"And I chose to come anyway." He shrugged, experiencing the relief of a healing potion. "Besides, I was fine, ok?"

Rui stared at him skeptically. "…Uh huh."

"We injured each other. That's a tie, as far as I am concerned."

While Rui had to admit that he did a good job holding out against a creature that was much stronger, to call it a tie was questionable at best, especially when Kane didn't have a good way of taking down such creatures.

Daggers were great against human-sized targets, but wyverns were much larger and had a tough armor of scales that could deflect or largely negate his daggers as an offense.

"What the fuck is wrong with this region anyway?" Kane complained. "I thought you told me this was supposed to be a Squire-level region. It sure as hell doesn't feel that way!"

Rui's expression grew grim. "It has rapidly grown more dangerous quicker than the Adventurer's Guild could keep up."

This was the consequence of forgoing dedicated veracity in order to reduce the cost of Beast Domain services. They could make their services cheaper and economically viable, but, in turn, countless adventurers died due to a lack of information on the dangers and risks, or worse, due to misinformation about the dangers and risks.

Now that his friend had almost died as a result, Rui was especially angered by this.

"Based on the level of the strongest creatures in the region, as well as the fact that the region causes one to experience fear, making them a target for powerful fear-sensitive creatures…" Rui narrowed his eyes. "I'd say this region is on the higher-end of Senior-level danger zones."

Senior-level danger zones tended to have a few Master-level beasts. However, while this region lacked those, its environment hampered outsiders and made them targeted by predators, making it far worse.

In fact, how many Martial Seniors would survive in this region?

He could think of only two that he knew of.

The Gatekeeper would deal with the wyverns as easily as Rui had. Rui had no doubt that the man would have to go all out with his martial heart and martial heart manipulation in order to overcome so many powerful high-grade wyverns with great coordination and brute force alone.

But he had an extremely difficult time picturing them taking him down, even though they would hurt him to some extent.

While Rui was unable to hurt him with his attacks, the combined power of the wyverns far exceeded that of his own.

"Huff…" He shook his head, putting the matter aside.

Kane heaved a sigh of relief, fully restored. "So, what now?"

"I have caught one wyvern," Rui replied, keeping an eye on the creature. "I chose the oldest one of the group. This one is the most likely to know something about the Divine Doctor."

Rui had been paying attention to all the wyverns throughout the battle. He quickly noticed that most of them were on the younger side. He knew that wyverns tended to reach maturation extremely early despite having long lives. He inferred that most of them probably knew nothing about the Divine Doctor.

There were a few elder wyverns that, rather than taking an active role in hunting, took more effort to protect their progeny from his attacks. He deduced that they were the most likely to have been around when the Divine Doctor disrupted the ecosystem of the region.

Thus, there was no reason to interrogate each and every single one of them as long as he had one firm and proper source of information.

"Let's go; he might die if I don't heal him," Rui muttered as the two of them immediately headed to the half-dead wyvern.

The dying lesser dragon made pitiful squeaking and whimpering noises as it tried to move. Yet each attempt caused it even more pain than before.

STEP

Rui arrived before it, squatting to meet its gaze at eye-level.

My offer is simple. Rui hoped that it was intelligent enough to parse the concept of trade. Give me information, and I will let you live. I will even heal you.

Rui made a quick demonstration, consuming a healing potion and showing the wyvern how the few gashes on his body quickly disappeared, leaving nothing more than mild scars from what could have been old wounds.

"Rrrrk?" Its eyes lit up at the sight as it finally understood what Rui was conveying.

Agreed. Heal. Help. It gazed at Rui with its inhuman eyes.

"First, I get what I want," he replied. "This will work smoother if you cooperate. Just try your best to actively remember everything you can. That's good enough."

He didn't waste any more words.

Sleep.

A world of darkness overcame it as its consciousness dimmed in activity while its subconscious mind grew more vigorous. It had already entered a trance much deeper than the one that Rui had put it in during the battle.

"Plurichroma."

The world around them shifted as he took his time going through every single wavelength and frequency of light and sound, mapping the corresponding subconscious non-verbal communication associated with each of them.

With that and the intent-evaluation SOUL model that he had made during the battle, he quickly created the memory-

evaluation SOUL model.

Immediately, he conjured up the image of the Divine Doctor, embodying it in his mind such that his subconscious mind caused him to subconsciously act like the Divine Doctor was actually there.

The subconscious non-verbal communication adhered to that, fully communicating the image to the wyvern.

Much to his delight, a blossom of memories were triggered, resurfacing them as the wyvern relived them in real-time.

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