“Well, looks like that gate has opened,” Rui gestured. “I guess this is it.”

He glanced at the two of them who had mixed expressions, sighing. “I know how it feels, but your future is your future. You will have plenty of time to spend time with your family when you graduate, if that is what you desire just like I am doing at the moment. So cheer up, okay?”

The two of them smiled at those words, nodding.

“Thank you, brother, we wouldn’t be here without you,”

It wasn’t long before he could only watch their figures disappear into the massive crowd that was pouring into the Martial Academy.

(‘Well, their training is no longer something I will be guide,’)

This wasn’t a bad thing. Martial Apprentices were meant to make their own decisions when it came to Martial Art. This was a sacred principle that not even the strictest of Martial families violated. Forcibly interfering once the Martial Path was absolutely detrimental to their progress. All influencing of the Martial Path was done prior to the breakthrough to the Apprentice Realm.

The Martial Union even made it a crime that could be enforced and penalized over, by virtue of the judiciary authority they possessed according to the jurisdiction of Martial criminality clause of the Kandrian Martial Covenant, to try and force Martial Artists to change or alter their Martial Path in any way.

(‘The Squire mentors of the Martial Academy are highly qualified and experienced, they know what lines they ought not to cross,’) Rui smiled warmly as he fondly looked back at his time with Squire instructors Kyrie and Dylon.

He had gained a lot more respect for them after having become a Martial Squire and having trained guided Martial Apprentices. He had come to understand exactly what it meant to be a Martial Squire capable of guiding Martial Apprentices to the Squire Realm while also being high-grade Martial Squires themselves.

Rui, at the moment, could not be considered a high-grade Martial Squire. That was reserved for Martial Squires above grade six, which he was not, at the moment.

“Anyways, time to head back ho-… Ah,” Rui smiled as recalled something. “I actually have something to check up on.”

He sky-walked, uncaring of the attention he drew as he navigated his way through the town of Hajin, before making his way to a weapons shop.

The weapons shop was quite large, featuring a great volume inside, and a great many weapons on the walls and on tabled beneath a glass cover.

A large crowd of people wandered about, looking at the weapons.

Most of them were human, but some of them were Martial Artists, and only one of them was a Martial Squire. Rui ignored them as he went about his business.

He made his way past the showroom as he went deeper into the building, his ears pricked as he heard banging sounds.

BANG!

BANG!

BANG!

Rui peered into a large workroom at the other end of the building from where a continuous metallic banging sound seemed to originate.

Inside was a huge forge around a gigantic fireplace. The flames were a bright white, rather than orange, Rui could feel the prickling heat of the fire from outside.

BANG!

He turned towards the source of the sound.

BANG!

BANG!

BANG!

A gargantuan man swinging a big hammer down on a long piece of molten steel at a regular pace.

“Mr. Derkean,” Rui smiled, calling out.

“Hm? Who’s disturbing my work?” He turned around, glancing at Rui with squinted eyes. “Ah, Squire brat. What do you want?”

“I was just wondering how went the forging of two products that I commissioned you for,” Rui smiled, amused.

It was rare for a normal human being to treat him rudely, he hadn’t experienced anything of the sort in a long time and appreciated the nostalgic feeling of being treated like a normal human being.

In the past two months, Rui had come to a realization while working on Project Monster Repellant.

“My body is too inadequate to be the basis of a technique meant to be extremely effective against the monsters of the Shionel Dungeon,” Rui sighed.

It couldn’t be helped. He already had resolved to stuff his body with a few esoteric substances for Project Eyespy. He couldn’t do the same thing for yet another technique simultaneously. It was too much, and the associated risks had exceeded the threshold that was his limit.

(‘If my body is insufficient, then…’)

There was only one solution.

Something other than his body had to serve as the basis for the technique that he was trying to create.

“Weapons…” Rui had sighed.

It wasn’t that he was extremely averse to weapons, certainly not. It was just that compared to his understanding of unarmed combat, his understanding of armed combat was far underdeveloped. It couldn’t be helped, given his profession.

But the world did not care about that. Although weapons were not ubiquitous for Martial Artists, they were still a relevant and significant field, and if he truly wanted to be able to adapt to all Martial Artists, then perhaps it was inevitable that he would need to lose his discomfort with them.

There hadn’t been any strong incentive to do it thus far.

Until now, that was.

“In this situation…” He had sighed. “There’s no excuse. I don’t have too much of a choice. It’s either weapons or be helpless against herds of high-grade Squire-level monsters. And that’s not even a real choice.”

Thus, he had spent quite some time on exactly what kind of weapon he wanted, and what it was supposed to do, before taking the liberty of commissioning a renowned blacksmith in the town of Hajin to forge what he needed.

“Weapons don’t just take half a month to finish, you think they grow on trees? Do you? HMM?” The man glared at Rui with such a comically exaggerated scowl that Rui had to exert himself to suppress a bout of laughter at the man’s hilarious antics.