The Martial Unity

"That's quite proactive of you," Carl nodded. "I had suspected that you might have read and remembered a bit of it when I read through your profile and saw the Mind Palace technique, but it is quite impressive that you have managed to get through it all."

The man looked quite impressed at Rui.

"It's not all that much, I didn't have much to do, after all," Rui modestly replied.

"If you have gone through it all, then we can begin by going through your thoughts on the G'ak'arkan Tribe," Carl nodded.

Rui paused for a second, gathering his thoughts as he considered it. It was one thing to read through and store all the vast information in his mind palace, and it was another entirely to infer all relevant important information and present it in a neatly tied package. Of course, since this was just a preliminary class in his training and briefing program, it was okay even if he wasn't being as concise as possible.

"The Ga'ak'arkan Tribe possesses a highly diverged culture and sets of values due to their extreme history and circumstances," Rui nodded, beginning by revisiting this basic fact. "This warps their interests greatly as well, albeit not entirely."

Carl gazed at him silently, unwilling to break his train of thought.

"The one universal interest that they share with us, by virtue of being human, is survival. Outside of this, there are far too many divergences from the norm," Rui stated. "However, surprisingly enough, it is not their greatest interest. The extreme willingness to provoke and engage in conflicts with the other tribes of the Vilun Island despite victory not necessarily being guaranteed shows that surviving, while still desirable, is not the most important thing to them. I believe it is because of this trait that the Martial Union has chosen not to antagonize them."

Carl nodded slowly, acknowledging Rui's points.

"When I read through the diplomatic dialogue with the G'ak'arkan Tribe, I was able to get a better understanding of why the G'ak'arkan Tribe is so extremely warmongering with the other tribes of Vilun Island," Rui mentioned. "It isn't entirely clear, perhaps due to linguistic barriers and inaccuracies in translation, but it does seem that they are primarily motivated by a desire to assert supremacy and dominance, as well as battle lust and pride. These three abstract interests are so strong to them that together they even trump their desire to survive! This is why they are so incessantly warmongering. These are their greatest interests without a doubt."

Carl smiled. "That's a very apt albeit slightly incomplete profile that you have created there. Well, follow up with logical conclusion of the premises that you just have included with the diplomatic theory that we went over prior. What can we do with the information that you have just inferred?"

"We can offer aid to them with fulfilling these abstract interests. We can help them achieve dominance on Vilun Island, we can help them fulfill their intense battle lust. But..." Rui paused, sighing.

"But?"

"But we have already tried that according to the diplomatic records of our negotiations with them," Rui shook his head. "The problem is the third abstract interest that I identified earlier; their pride. They possess an immense amount of pride. Too much to accept our help in defeating the other indigenous tribes of Vilun Island."

"Exactly," Carl nodded, sighing. "They are extremely prideful and have vehemently rejected any aid from us in their eternal conflict with their rivals and enemies. Sometimes I personally cannot help but wonder whether they actually want to win at all, as opposed to maintaining this deadlock of conflicts that they currently have."

Rui could understand that sentiment.

"Regardless," Carl continued. "Your analysis is spot-on; their pride prevents them from accepting the aid of any kind in their conflict with the other Martial tribes. They do not care for our tech and our resources. Currency is utterly meaningless to them. I'm sure you can understand our frustrations. However, despite this, there is one resource that we offered them that they showed some interest in. Can you tell what that is?"

"Martial Art techniques," Rui replied immediately.

"And what makes you say that?"

"The negotiations where we deliberated regarding the techniques that we had to offer lasted the longest, and had the greatest amount of engagement and initiative from the G'ak'arkan Tribe," Rui replied. "It can be surmised that out of all our attempts at attempting to levy their interests to earn their cooperation, our Martial Art techniques had the greatest degree of success."

"Shrewd of you to notice that," Carl nodded with a pleasant smile. "And can you discern why they failed?"

"...Not through my own merit, no. Martial commissioner Derun informed me about the reason." Rui admitted. "The measure of respect they have for those they interact with is entirely dependant on one's Martial prowess. Many of our attempts to negotiate with them were doomed simply because our diplomats were normal humans and were thus entirely dismissed despite representing the Martial Union."

"That is indeed what happened," Carl nodded. "Our foreign affairs department had to grind against a wall as we dealt with members who simply did not possess as much power or influence within their tribe. It was only after that we switched to the nearly unprecedented decision of sending a Martial Artist as our main diplomat. I can assure you that this was not an easy decision to make. From my perspective at the time, it was nothing short of insanity. You do not send Martial Artists for diplomatic negotiations for the same reason you don't send diplomats to complete Martial missions. It is a suicidal idea that will lead to heavy losses in nearly every case."

Rui smiled wryly. "'Nearly' being the keyword here."

"Yes, the most important word there," Carl heaved a resigned sigh. "In these particular circumstances, sending in Martial Artists to negotiate with the G'ak'arkan Tribe was quite remarkable in so far as how effective it initially seemed to be turning out."