"Now then," The man began once they finally sat down in his office. "Let us talk about our end of the deal,"
Rui simply stared at him silently, waiting for him to begin.
"The evaluation of your technique isn't out yet officially, however, unofficially, I can tell you that we value the technique that you've developed immensely. However, our concern is the low dissemination viability of the technique due to the burdensome mental calculations that need to be rapidly executed within a short timeframe. This is an extremely high hurdle of difficulty. So much so that we see fit to grade its difficulty as nothing less than ten." The man commented.
Rui didn't bother refuting this, he knew that this would most likely be the case. He didn't think it could possibly be graded below nine due to how demanding the mental faculties of the Martial Artist aiming to use them were.
"Don't get me wrong, this does not take away from your personal accomplishment, in fact, it makes you even more impressive. But unfortunately, it does significantly reduce the impact the technology will have on the Martial world," He sighed, a hint of regret flashing in his eyes. "I don't know how many Martial Artists there are with the qualifications to attempt mastering this technique there are, but I can be damn well sure that they are no more than a minute portion of the Martial world."
Rui nodded, agreeing. "I take it this significantly impacts the value of the technique to the Martial Union, correct?"
"Yes, I'm afraid," He sighed. "Of course, every technique is valuable, and grade-ten techniques are no doubt extremely valued for increasing the peak of what Marital Artists are capable of. However, its direct impact is not as revolutionary as I truly hoped it would be."
"Won't the Martial Union work on researching ways to increase the dissemination value of the technique though?" Rui asked.
"Of course we will, but the outcomes of research projects cannot be guaranteed," The man sighed. "A preliminary research endeavor will be undertaken to gauge the difficulty of the project, depending on the results after a year of research, we may either proceed with it if it shows promise or abandon the research project if no progress is made even after a year. However, the research we conduct is not considered a part of the remuneration and recompense that the Martial Union will give you in exchange for the technique."
"That's fair," Rui nodded. Unless he was personally contributing to the research, he could not demand remuneration for the fruits of their research labor.
"Alright," The man nodded. "For a grade-ten Squire-level technique that is viable across even higher Realms and showing us a brand-new paradigm of accuracy that has produced shocking results, we have decided to award you one million Martial Credits!"
Rui raised an eyebrow.
That was an enormous amount of funds. Rui made less than ten thousand Martial credits with Squire-level missions. Meaning this reward was the equivalent of more than one hundred Squire-level missions.
Rui was extremely rich!
This degree of wealth would allow him to potentially commission Martial Masters for an extremely low-grade Master-level mission, who were among the most strategically powerful Martial assets of the Union and the Empire!
"I'm a little confused," Rui scratched his head, reacting in a way that Senior Ceeran did not expect. "I thought that the Martial Union would provide me with all manners of recompense that were exclusively offered to those who made contributions. I'm a little surprised at only being offered a huge sum of money."
Senior Ceeran chuckled, understanding Rui's confusion. "All of the various kinds of recompense that you're referring to can be purchased with the sum that we provided you with."
"So, anybody with money can purchase them?" Rui frowned.
If these goods and services were not exclusive to the Martial Artist, then the incentive to share techniques with the Martial Union was very little. Any rich douchebag could easily purchase all these services that Rui had to give up a precious personal technique to obtain. owns all content.
"No," The man shook his head. "The exclusive goods and services that the Martial Union has can only be purchased by Martial credits. And Martial credits cannot be exchanged with Kandrian gold coins or any other legacy. The only way to obtain them is through contributions, such as missions, submitting techniques, training methodologies, intelligence, etc."
"I see," Rui sighed inwardly in relief. "I'm glad to hear that."
This meant that the one million Martial credits that Rui had were extremely valuable and could probably purchase him all kinds of goods and other services.
"As for what you can purchase..." The man pulled out a thick book from his shelf. "There are far too many things for me to convey to you in a conversation. This is a collection of all the various exclusive things that you can purchase from the Martial Union using Martial credits. I will only be going through a number of the most sought-after and significant things. You can go through the rest here, or you can access a digital version through your accounter."
The size of the book was large.
"I see..." Rui narrowed his eyes as he considered the matter.
"The Martial Union offers many things to its contributors. We generally divide them into a number of categories. I will be going through the broad categories, while you can indulge in a deep dive through them in your own time."
Rui nodded, paying close attention to his words.
He wanted to make sure he got a thorough understanding of everything the Martial Union had to offer before making a decision on how to spend them. Hell, Rui wasn't even the neediest person. He was doing just fine training and completing missions on his own. However, that made his decision even harder. After all, now his choices weren't as obvious as before. He needed to work on choosing what fulfilled his interests the best.