In the time that he spent crossing the Kaddar Region, his thoughts wandered aimlessly, jumping from topic to topic.
He wondered what the Beggar's Sect's founder was like.
He wondered how Master Deivon was doing these days.
He wondered where Ieyasu was.
The man had left well before Rui did without so much as making a peep. Rui did not go see him off either. He was right when he stated that they weren't friends. They were tools to each other at the very most.
It was unlikely that they would ever meet again. That was how gigantic the Panama continent was. Thus, Ieyasu did not see any point in meeting Rui one final time.
"Shame." Rui remarked.
Rui enjoyed the feeling of someone who was truly his equal. Kane was a prodigious genius who broke through to the Apprentice Realm at the age of eleven, six years earlier than the average, yet even he struggled to keep up with Rui.
That was not the case with Ieyasu.
Their spars had always been stalemates where neither side was able to gain a meaningful advantage. It was enjoyable to have someone he could relate to. There were many parallels between them. It was rather unfortunate that Ieyasu was extremely detached, though Rui suspected that it was that trait among others that led to the development of such an absurd Martial Path.
Regardless, they would meet if they were fated to. The chances of it happening increased the stronger the both of them got.
His superfluous thoughts came to an end once he finally left the Kaddar Region and began heading to the east side of the continent.
Currently, he was on the west side of the continent, having been traveling west for the past three years away from the Kandrian Empire. The fact that he was heading east for the first time since leaving the Shionel Confederation was also a milestone in and of itself.
It was a sign that he was finally returning to handle unfinished business. In his mind, a long-term plan had already begun forming.
The first step as he already surmised was gaining all the relevant information he needed to evaluate the nature and the difficulty of killing Chairman Deacon. This alone was not going to be easy because he doubted that the Beggar's Sect was going to be too easy to deal with. He doubted that gathering all of the information he needed was going to be easy either.
Regardless, he had a little under seven years left. He didn't mind if the intelligence part alone took a few years if that was the price of being extremely thorough and careful.
Besides, it wasn't as though he could immediately come up with a plan and execute it even if he did get every ounce of the information he needed. He was still not strong enough, although he had taken massive strides in power recently. He estimated that several years of training and developing his Martial Art were needed before he was qualified to undertake this task.
Years of intelligence gathering while building up his personal power and cooking up a plan so that he could decisively land a death blow on Chairman Deacon before the decade-long protection ended.
From here on out, he would need to demonstrate a lot of patience and dedication. The times for frolicking around the continent from place to place with his best friend were over.
Another thing he had given a lot of consideration to was his growth trajectory from here on out.
He needed to grow stronger, but he also needed to pay attention to how he grew stronger. The stronger he got, the less clear the path to greater power was.
For much of his time as a Martial Artist, his foundation was incomplete. When he started out as a Martial Apprentice, he spent a few years building up his Martial Art, covering all bases.
By the time he truly built a solid foundation in all fields, it was time to break through to the Squire Realm, and all his progress had been undone. He needed to start from scratch. It took even longer in the Squire Realm to reach a state where his foundation was solid. He estimated that he had reached that state shortly after he left Crexeet Town.
Then he undertook the Metabody System which took a few years itself.
And now, he broke through to the Senior Realm. Thus it begged the question as to what path he was going to take forward to greater strength.
Fortunately, there were several possibilities.
The first possibility was exploring primordial seed. The wonderful substance that he had come across in the third round of the Martial Contest was of great interest to him. The powerful substance had limitless possibilities as it could turn into anything. It allowed abyssfeeders to adapt extremely well despite their lack of minds. He had grown extremely interested when he first learned about it.
Another possibility was developing techniques that were suited to taking down Chairman Deacon after he gathered some intelligence on his security and protective measures and failsafe. Stealth techniques and assassination techniques, among other kinds of things. That was also an option worth considering.
The third possibility was exploring mental techniques. This had always been an area of interest to him. One that he wasn't able to explore due to having an incomplete foundation. His Martial Path required him to be able to adapt and evolve to all other Martial Art, and that necessarily meant being good at offense, defense, and maneuvering, while also being good at all ranges of combat. Those took precedence over a less fundamentally important field like mental techniques. There were fewer Martial Art he could precisely adapt and evolve to using due to them not being primary, thus they were less important.
But now that he had an extremely powerful and solid foundation, they were worth considering as an option especially since he had an affinity for them.
He could also consider doing all three to certain degrees if he wanted to, but that would take more effort, so he wasn't sure if that was a good idea.
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