The Martial Unity

More than a month had passed since Rui began training the Godspeed technique, and Rui marveled at how different it was from any other breathing technique that he had ever mastered.

It was the only technique that placed greater weight on the frequency of breaths and on the quality of exhalation compared to other techniques that focused more on the timing of inhalation. The timing of exhalation mattered a lot more with this technique than it did.

The first thing he discovered was that it was incompatible with his other breathing techniques, of which he had three at the moment.

Final breathing, Wind Breathing, and Gale Force Breathing.

He discovered that their timings clashed and that there was no way he could use any of them with the Godspeed breathing technique simultaneously. It was why he felt it was difficult to integrate it into his muscle memory, but he persevered.

His days had become jam-packed. He had to raid the dungeon as the Voider to supply the Shionel Dungeon and the Martial Union, on top of that, he needed to keep up appearances and clear the dungeon as Rui Quarrier as well so that he didn't draw any suspicion from the investigations that Chairman Deacon had launched into the identity of the Voider.

He knew that the Martial Union was actively protecting him by sabotaging the investigation to ensure that he would never be caught red-handed. Considering that Chairman Deacon had yet to come to suspect him personally, he supposed that they were doing that job well. Still, there was no need to make life harder for himself and them by not keeping up the perfect appearances that he had kept all this time.

On top of all of that, he needed to train hard as well. These three jobs took most of his time.

It didn't help that each of the dungeons that he had discovered kept getting progressively larger and larger.

No longer was it possible to empty a dungeon in a single day. They began becoming cumbersome week-long processes to completely clear and plunder. On top of that, all of the adventurers had finally destroyed all the ants that Rui had released into the entire dungeon. A powerful S-rank team had found the ant floor, discovering the ant mountain and, eventually, the queen ant before informing the Adventurer Guild. This resulted in a large crusade that ended up eradicating all the ants and killing the powerful queen ant as well.

The increased dangers of the Shionel Dungeon above the norm had been alleviated, and the adventurers had begun to once more crawl across the entire dungeon, exploring the dungeon more fiercely than ever before. All of the many Martial Squires that had poured in from that local segment of the continent in more recent times as well as Ma

Much to Rui's dismay, they had discovered many as well. This had been within his predictions. Even though he considered his ability to explore to be greater than that of all of them combined, he did not, for one second, mistake the combined effort of many thousands of Martial Squire adventurers as trivial. With so many pouring through the dizzying maze of tunnels in the Shionel Dungeon, they were bound to discover new floors, including the ones that Rui had already found but hadn't gotten to yet.

The good thing was that once a floor was discovered, they immediately all flocked to that floor, putting aside exploration for a brief amount of time.

Thus, a certain pattern had begun in the matters regarding the Shionel Dungeon as things seemed to reach a balance. The conflict between the Voider and Chairman Deacon had certainly not ceased, but it was clear that they weren't clashing against each other.

Chairman Deacon's efforts were partially successful.

He had not succeeded in finding the Voider, frustratingly enough, but he had managed to break the Voider's monopoly and dominance to a certain degree.

It turned out that as powerful as Kane and Rui were inside the dungeon, the same could be said for thousands of Martial Squires. Chairman Deacon's efforts of uniting domestic and foreign stakeholders who were negatively affected by the Voider to obtain an incredibly powerful Martial Squire force that could cover a huge amount of ground exploration, and monopolize an entire dungeon, were successful. He had managed to obtain several large floors all to himself and his allies, the contents of which they distributed based on their contribution to the alliances.

Chairman Deacon, as the prime uniter and by far the largest contributor of capital, resources, and Martial power, received the lion's share of benefits.

Although it wasn't quite as strong as his dominance prior to the Voider, it was still satisfactory, and he was able to regain a growing trend.

Guildmaster Bradt on the other hand had benefited largely from partnering with Esosale Suppliers and had consolidated even more economic and political power, readying himself for the confrontation with Chairman Deacon over the position of Guildmaster in the Shionel Confederation.

Rui had stopped concerning himself with those matters.

He had unerringly dedicated an absurd amount of time to mastering the breathing technique.

"Sleep is important you know," Kane watched with incredulity as Rui every single hour of every single day to maximum use. "You're going to go insane if you don't take a moment to breathe, holy shit."

Rui didn't even bother responding as he practiced the breathing technique with his other techniques and attacks.

He needed to finish mastering the breathing technique with the many techniques of his Martial Art for starters as well as foundational moves and maneuvers.

He didn't have time to expand it to all possible moves that the human body could make, thus he settled for all combat-related ones. He wasn't sure he even needed to expand it to non-combat-related movements.

It took him a month and a half to master the Godspeed breathing form, and master its timing alongside other techniques and movements, much to Kane's surprise. He was already ready to move on to the next stages of the training of the Godspeed technique.