"Did you take a rejuvenation potion?" She asked, tilting her hair squinting her brown eyes with curiosity. "You did mention you had some."
Rui shook his head. "Those were for rejuvenating the mind, negating the need to sleep."
Bella nodded, well familiar with mental rejuvenation potions herself. "How do you have so much stamina?"
"It comes from honing my stamina through strict intense physical training, and also from an Apprentice-level Martial Art technique called Helical Breathing." Rui explained. "It saves increases efficiency of energy consumption, allowing you to accomplish the same results with less effort."
"Hmmm..." Bella nodded. "Must be nice to be a Martial Artist. You have so much power, you must feel incredibly secure and confident."
Rui thought about her words. It was true to some degree, unless his opponent was a Martial Apprentice, there wasn't much that ordinary humans could do. However, it wasn't something he really thought of. He never began his voyage down his Martial Path in order to obtain more physical power. His goal was to practice and develop his Martial Art forever, just that alone gave him true elation and fulfillment.
The physical security was ultimately just a good bonus, it was not his motivation or his goal.
Furthermore, having spent most of his time in the Academy since he became an Apprentice, he hadn't experienced much of the sense of increased security. Since as soon as he broke through to Martial Apprentice, he was immediately booted out of the Exploration Stage and shipped to the Apprentice section. He was immediately surrounded by Martial Apprentices who initially all much stronger than him.
There were, of course, the Martial Apprentices of his batch, who were all stronger than him. Then there were Martial Apprentices of the senior batches who had accumulated more techniques and experience than the Martial Apprentices of his own batch.
It was not easy to feel physically secure when all of your peers were stronger than you.
The only time he had spent outside the Academy was when he went home for the winter break, but that was incredibly brief, he hadn't really had much time to actually introspect on how the world appeared to him now that he was a Martial Apprentice.
However, now that he thought more about it, he had become more cognizant of this feeling. He had a decently strong sense of security in this mission. As a Martial Apprentice, realistically only another Martial Apprentice could threaten him, and this mission would be, at the very least, a grade four on the difficulty scale if there were other Martial Apprentices were involved, reaching potentially much higher.
Of course, there was always the possibility that a Martial Apprentice, but that was extremely unlikely given that this a low-grade mission, so he was alert, but still relaxed.
"The sense of security is good." Rui admitted.
Bella nodded. "I'm a little envious, this catastrophe has shown me how helpless I am."
"By yourself, you are helpless, like all humans." Rui straightforwardly affirmed. "But once you consolidate your position within the Hier Industries, your power would far exceed mine. There is more than one kind of power, I pursue Martial Art because I love Martial Art, and not because of the power it gives me."
"Oh?" Bella's eyebrow lifted? "You didn't strike me as the fiery passionate type."
Rui chuckled. "That's because this is a mission, I'm expected to be professional."
"Then why are you having this little conversation?" Bella asked, with just the slightest hint of playfulness creeping onto her face.
Rui shrugged.
He had chatted with her to lift her mood up slightly, but he didn't want to say that out loud. But Bella had noticed regardless.
"Thanks, I appreciate it." She rested her chin on his shoulder. "The past few days have been rough."
"No worries." Rui replied briefly.
The remaining journey was silent for the most part. Rui traversed through obscure routes and paths through district fourteen, a few hours later they had finally reached district twenty-three.
"Huff... huff... huff..." Rui panted.
Even with his stamina, he was tired. After considering his situation, he decided to take one of the rejuvenation potions he had at hand.
"I thought you were planning on saving those." Bella noted.
"At this rate, the mission won't last three days." Rui stated. "I think if you had a more nuanced understanding of what Martial Apprentices were capable of, you would have reduced the timeframe of the mission while increasing the difficulty so that you could obtain higher-grade Martial Apprentices, but hey you lucked out."
"How so?" Bella wondered.
"My evaluation from the Martial Academy was well above the difficulty grade assigned to the mission, you see."
"Oh?" Bella glanced at him curiously. "Then why did you accept the mission?"
"It's my first mission, so I planned to take it slow." Rui shrugged, before pointedly staring at her. "But thanks to a certain someone underselling the difficulty of the mission, that plan is not happening."
"Well, I didn't lie." Bella shrugged, smirking.
Rui snorted. "The Martial Union penalizes gross under-reporting, that's specified in the contract."
"Yes but they can't prove I underreported."
"You think that matters?" Rui laughed. "Your intent doesn't matter, as long as they evaluate you to bear responsibility for the under-reporting, you'll be penalized. If the Martial Union allowed people to get away with stuff like this, then everybody would severely undersell the difficulty of all missions, each mission would be much more difficult than evaluated and the Martial Union would be getting scammed left and right."
"True." Bella sighed. "But once I consolidate my position in the Hier Industries, I'll be able to pay off any monetary penalty they impose."
"That must have been part of your plan." Rui chuckled.
"It was." She admitted. "As long as I can gain full control of all the power and wealth my father has passed down to me, I can fix everything."
"I can pay for what I did and also..." Bella's voice submerged into rage. "I can make those who caused all of this to pay for what they did!"
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