1541 Preoccupations

"Enough about me, what have all of you been up to?" Rui asked, curious.

"I've been spending most of my time training and undertaking missions," Fiona replied cheerily.

"Martial Union?"

"Not at all," She shook her head. "I've been working for my own family. Undertaking operations surrounding our family businesses and matters. I stopped fulfilling open commissions from the Martial Union after I broke through to the Squire Realm." Copyright by Nôv/elDrama.Org.

"Ah, that must be in preparation for undertaking more responsibility within your family," Rui mused.

"Indeed," She nodded. "Our family has entanglements and obligations to many other prestigious families in the Martial community of the Kandrian Empire and other organizations, in addition…"

Her expression grew complicated. "The Dullahan Family has openly sided with Prince Raijun Ver Kandria, joining the Raijun Faction and becoming one of the donors and patrons of the Raijun Foundation. So I have been undertaking missions commissioned by His Highness' administration as well."

Rui raised an eyebrow. "Prince Raijun…I believe that's the Martial Apprentice prince, right?"

She nodded, heaving a sigh.

Clearly, she wasn't the biggest fan of this development.

Rui considered the matter thoughtfully. His knowledge was extremely shallow, but he was aware of the basics. Prince Raijun was a Martial Apprentice who had managed to become an internal member of the Martial Union, joining its corps. The same position that Rui had been offered but had ultimately rejected.

"I see…" Rui's eyes narrowed in thought.

If he was reading it right, Prince Raijun was basically the Martial Union's ticket to the Throne War. No matter how powerful an organization was, they were wholly unable to compete for the throne unless it was through a royal descendant of royal blood competing for the throne as a candidate for emperor or empress.

From what little Rui knew and deduced, Prince Raijun was most likely the front through which the Martial Union was partaking in the Kandrian Throne War. He shook his head slightly, he needed to stop getting his head tangled in matters that had nothing to do with him.

"Sounds busy," He commented, turning to Nel and Hever. "What about you two?"

"Fighting!" Nel grinned.

"Refining my Martial Art," He commented. "I'm working on maximizing the potential for my body."

Rui nodded, they were both on a steady path to the Senior Realm. He was quite confident in their ability to reach the Senior Realm eventually.

"What about you, Fiona?" He turned towards her.

"I've been hired as an explorer by the Ministry of Ecology and Environment," She replied, sipping her coffee.

"Oh…?" Rui raised an eyebrow with interest. "Interesting. I've worked with the Ministry of Ecology and Environment many times, but that was through the Martial Union serving as a broker, as usual. I think I was offered a job long ago."

Rui recalled the job offer he got after he successfully killed the earthen basilisk in one of his hunting missions.

"This is different from those. I was actually offered a job too and I accepted in a heartbeat," She remarked. "The Ministry deploys me to various places and locations either to explore and scale or document them, or find and investigate certain phenomena, either anomalous or dangerous, and sometimes has me deal with risks and threats."

"That suits you," Rui smiled knowingly. "You were always a highly curious one. It makes sense that you would eventually become an explorer. Have you ever been deployed to the Beast Domain?"

"Just once," She remarked. "It's a highly dangerous place so normally only experienced high-grade Martial Artists get deployed there. I'm building up my experience and Martial Art steadily so I can explore the wonders of the Beast Domain someday."

Her eyes lit up with passion when she spoke about it.

"I'm glad you seem to enjoy it," Rui nodded. "You all seem to have been doing good all these years."

He felt glad that he was able to reconnect with old friends. This was one of the reasons he had looked forward to returning to the Kandrian Empire.

"Now that you have taken the opportunity to familiarize yourselves with our statuses…" Fiona's eyes flashed with curiosity. "You must tell us what happened to you in the past eight years!"

It wasn't just her eyes, everybody immediately grew more interested at that. Even Milliana, who was normally detached, stared at Rui with an intensity.

Each of them was curious about what had happened to Rui leading to him becoming the youngest Martial Senior in history.

How could they not be?

Rui heaved an amused sigh, before he began narrating the story once more. It took him a while with an edited and redacted version of the story, but he managed to give them the short of it.

They listened attentively from start to finish.

"…Once I confirmed that the news of his death was real, I came back home," Rui remarked.

"My…what an incredible story," Fae murmured. "Truly astounding. I thought you had broken through recently, but to think that you had broken through four years ago. That's almost too absurd to believe."

Rui didn't even blame them. "You can ask Kane, he'll confirm."

"Speaking of which…" Fiona interjected. "Why isn't he here?"

"He would definitely not miss Rui's return," Dalen murmured thoughtfully.

"He's…busy," Rui shook his head. "I told him about the reunion but he said he would have to pass."

Rui would have done the same if he was in his position. He was about to make the biggest decision of his life, he almost certainly wasn't in the mood for hanging out with friends. Besides, he had been meeting all of them for two years now, so this wasn't particularly a special or novel thing like it was to Rui.

The seven of them discussed about a variety of matters, trying to make for the many years since they hadn't seen Rui, informing him of a variety of local and regional events within the Kandrian Empire in the past few years that Rui had missed.