"You look rough." Kane noted.

p "I've had a rough a day." Rui replied. "My mission was hard, and I failed."

Kane glanced back at Rui. "Oof, that must be rough. But hey, it happens to everyone. Chin up." He put an arm around Rui's shoulder. "What mission did you choose?"

"Bodyguard." Rui replied with a single word.

Kane's eyes widened as he realized why Rui had been looking so down, and why the failure had hit him so hard. "...Damn."

"Yeah, it was rough." Rui sighed. "I had chosen a bodyguard mission of grade one, looking to take things slow with an easy mission to break the ice. Turns out the mission was actually a grade five mission, at the very least." Rui paused.

Kane jerked his head back in shock. "Grade five?? Those are only for missions that are able to threaten the lives of Martial Apprentices. You and I shouldn't even be allowed to take missions of that grade."

"Yeah, the mission's difficulty was severely underestimated by the Martial Academy, apparently." Rui sighed helplessly. "My target of protection was being hunted down by a huge local behemoth of an esoteric supplier, we were being pursued by gangs and even a Martial Apprentice."

"That's actually insane, what the fuck?" Kane was entirely in disbelief. "I'm impressed you survived."

"I only managed because their prime target wasn't me, they managed to hold me back with a Martial Apprentice who pulled me away from my target, and my target was killed after she was eperated from me."

"That's messed up."Content is © 2024 .

"Yeah."

They both sat around in silence, before Rui broke it with a question.

"What mission did you undertake?" Rui asked. "You were gone for four days."

"I took a hunting mission." Kane shrugged. "Had to hunt some highly elusive species of deer."

"Deer?"

"Yeah, the mission had a high pre-requisite as far as maneuvering techniques went. So I chose the mission because it was right up my alley."

"What grade mission was it?" Rui asked out of curiosity.

"Only a grade two. Requires a lot of time and sustained effort, but of no threat to life." Kane replied. "The perfect mission to ensure I didn't have to go home, you see. That alone was worth the mission, even if there was no remuneration."

Rui chuckled mirthfully at Kane's words. Talking with Kane really did put him to ease.

"So you're planning to do more missions right?" Kane asked. "Since you must not have gotten any significant amount of Martial Credits from this mission."

"No, I did."

"Eh?" Kane tilted his head.

"The headmaster told me that the Martial Academy took full responsibility for the failure of the mission, and would be remunerating me with the mission-success reward in addition to the minimum guarantee payroll as a token of apology."

"That's actually awesome. How many Martial Credits is that in total?" Kane inquired.

"A total of fifty-seven Martial Credits."

"Hmmm. That's not bad, you should be able to purchase a somewhat not-bad technique with that." Kane politely offered.

"And I wanted to set out to grow stronger immediately too." Rui sighed.

"I'd suggest not doing that." Kane told Rui. "I'd suggest amassing some more credits as well as mission experience before jumping into a training period."

"Hmmm..." Rui pondered. Perhaps his desire to develop his Martial Art as well as to grow stronger had made him a tad too impatient. He had really only been a Martial Apprentice for less than half a year, and had joined the Academy only a year ago.

If he put aside his emotions for a second, he was sure his growth trajectory was extremely optimistic. What he needed was a well-founded, stable growth. Rashly picking some technique with a constrained budget was not the best choice at hand.

Kane said that fifty-seven Martial Credits were enough to get a 'somewhat not-bad' technique with that, which was a polite of way of saying a bad technique.

Although paid techniques were above foundational free techniques, that didn't mean they were good. In fact, Rui was largely as strong as he was not because his techniques were super powerful, but because he used them much better than Martial Apprentices of his age and growth level. A large portion of his strength came from the predictive and counter-deductive systems of the VOID algorithm and the resourceful tactics he applied in combat.

What Rui needed not was to comprehensively build upon the foundation of his Martial Art in a less constrained way. This meant accumulating enough martial credits to be able to buy higher grade techniques that were suited to his Martial Art.

Maybe even spend the next month or two just grinding and speed-running low-grade missions to gather Martial Credits easily and without much pressure and risk.

"You're right." Rui muttered. "I do like immersing myself in training with a lot of techniques. I don't want to jump back and forth between training and missions too frequently either, those abrupt changes in mindsets are annoying."

Kane nodded. "Also, you do learn techniques way faster than the others, so if you train yourself to learn one technique, you would be out too quick."

Rui nodded.

"Also." Kane added. "You should experience some successes before you close yourself in your little Martial mancave for training."

"Experience some successes?" Rui asked.

"Yeah. Like just the satisfaction of completing a tiring mission is good. I don't think you should go right into training after a devastating failure, you'll just end up being depressed or cynical." Kane shurgged. "But that's what I think."

He brought up a good point, Rui realized. His mental state was far, far from healthy. This was to be expected since it hadn't even been half a day since Bella died. But he realized that Kane was wise to suggest avoiding holing himself up in this mental state.

Rui had simply not thought of this because he used to hole himself up practically his entire life in his last life, mostly because of his asthama.

"You're right." Rui smiled. "I should go slam dunk some missions."

"What's a slam dunk?"

"Er, nothing."