Many spectators to the war between the Kaddar Treaty Organization and the Floating Sect could not help but feel surprised at the outcome of the battle.

Of course, this was merely the outcome of a battle containing around ten percent of all the forces at play, yet it showed that the guardians of the Floating Sect were not weak.

The Kaddar Treaty Organization was aware of the fact that the Floating Sect's guardians were elites among high-grade Martial Squires. After all, the process of becoming a guardian, and then maintaining it was grueling. It filtered out the cream of the crop and ensured that even weaker high-grade Martial Squires simply never had the ability to become guardians of the Floating Sect due to simply lacking the necessary resources.

Yet even then, the performance of the Floating Sect was jarringly impressive. The guardians were powerful enough to win against their Kaddar counterparts.

Especially the one that killed dozens of Martial Squires.

It was absurd to the Kaddar nations that one Martial Squires killed so many others. In fact, the Kaddar nations had initially thought that he was actually a Martial Senior who had been deployed to wipe out their Martial Squires.

It had taken them a while to realize that this wasn't the case.

The Kaddar nations immediately realized that they had underestimated the Floating Sect. It didn't help that the Floating Sect's contact with the outside world was almost non-existent. Gaining intelligence on the level of power of the Floating Sect on average was not easy. The Kaddar nations had naively thought that simply hiring decently powerful Martial Squires would be enough to seal the deal, but apparently, this was clearly not the case.

Yet, it wasn't the end of the world.

While the Floating Sect had quality, the Kaddar Region had quantity. That was the reason that the Floating Sect was in a bit of a punch. Every guardian that they had lost, and would lose from here on out was going to stick.

The flow of Martial Squires entering the Floating Sect had reduced, although it appeared that a particularly slippery Martial Squire appeared from time to time, entering the Floating Sect, and immediately becoming a guardian.

That was the only incentive to join the Floating Sect at the moment, there were vacancies that could definitely be filled with new blood.

However, it was not enough compared to the influx of Martial Squires that the Kaddar Region could bring in at the moment.

This was what the Floating Sect had evidently prepared for when they focused their policies on attracting the strongest of Martial Squires, and making sure that the strongest of Marital Squires remained within was clearly paying off.

The Kaddar nations needed to persevere and truly grind away at the Floating Sect's problems.Content is property © .

And grind away it did.

The Kaddar nations could not gather, organize, and replace Martial Squires too frequently, but they were able to do it enough to ensure that they could attack the Floating Sect regularly. The Martial Squires of the Floating Sect held on strong, even on days when Rui wasn't on the battlefield.

Rui grew to cherish those periods. He could invest in himself significantly, and grow stronger naturally as a result. The best part was that he had a very clear-cut direction forward. After all, he had spent quite some time ironing out his plan centered around his ambitions and goals. Now he just needed to refine them a bit and begin the exploration and training.

In order to upgrade the VOID algorithm, he had chosen to add a new system based on changing the Martial Body in order to adapt a spec configuration to another kind of Martial Art.

He had immediately begun with one of the more promising and accessible methods that he had proposed in mind.

The Hungry Pain technique, was not as though there was anything new to the technique itself, it was just that Rui realized that the energy consumed by the Hungry Pain technique could possibly be used for specific physical parameters as opposed to others.

Doing this would allow him to manipulate his spec configuration to a certain degree, although not entirely.

There were other avenues that he already had his eyes on, like the esoteric material science solution, or the symbiote solution. However, those were more long-term projects that could not be resolved in any short amount of time. Not even he could complete that research in any short period of time.

Another thing that he had come to realize in recent times was the fact that breathing techniques were also a possible solution to realizing the new system that he wanted to realize.

In fact, he recalled the breathing techniques that Ian Nepomniatchi used. The man's breathing techniques allowed him to manipulate his physical parameters. The only problem was that the breathing techniques used to do that did not manipulate his Martial body in any way. They only supplied it with more energy and strengthened it in some ways, they did not grant the spec configurations of desired Martial bodies needed to counter his opponent.

It meant that those on their own could not possibly be the solution to the challenge at hand.

However, he did think that there was a good chance that they would be part of the solution as a whole.

Regardless, he had multiple avenues of research. That was why he wasn't too disheartened by the difficulty of the ambitious goal that he had undertaken. Furthermore, he was also confident because of his track record. Projects that he undertook generally succeeded, and those many successes allowed him to reach a level where he undertook projects with great confidence and dedication.

Furthermore, this was no ordinary project, and he had been more excited about upgrading the VOID algorithm than he had been about any other technique project that he had ever tried to engage in before.

With that in mind, he headed to the Martial library of the Floating Sect, taking his first step in realizing Project Metabody.