The Martial Unity

Rui shook his head, dismissing the irrelevant thoughts flying through his head. He scanned the library, wondering where to begin.

"Well, I guess I can just start with whatever." Rui shrugged.

He walked over the defense class section, nonchalantly sauntering across the shelves as he scanned the basic information displayed, eying each mission as he passed them.

[Defense class: Bodyguard mission

Difficulty grade: 3

Target of protection: Hilla Viona

Specified/estimated Location/range of mission: Within a radius of 20 kilometers of (28.5, 19.8)

Time period of mission: 1 week.

Mission commencement: Immediate

Successful completion renumeration: 80 silver coins/ 208 Martial Credits

Skillset pre-requisites: two Apprentice-level defense-oriented techniques.]

...

[Defense class: Guard mission.

Difficulty grade: 3

Target of security: Residential front gate.

Stated/estimated Location/range of mission: (2.875, 4.978)

Time period of mission: 1 month

Mission commencement date: Winter 28th/ 416

Successful completion renumeration: 192 silver coins/500 Martial credits

Skillset pre-requisites: one Apprentice-level defense-oriented technique]

…

[Defense class: Transporter mission:

Difficulty grade: 2

Target of transportation: Unspecified box with dimensions 5cm x 3cm x 6cm. Fragile

Starting/ending point and distance of travel: Town of Hajin to Town of Gadak; 120 kilometers.

Mission Commencement date: Winter 42nd/416

Successful renumeration: 28 silver coins/72 Martial credits

Skillset pre-requisites: one Apprentice-level defense-oriented technique and one Apprentice-level maneuvering-oriented technique.]

…

"Hmmm..." Rui browsed through each mission one-by-one, taking his time. He was quite fascinated by the organization and structure to the categorization of missions, allowing for remarkable ease of access of missions that fell into the preference of Martial Artists looking to complete missions.

The information displayed alongside the mission bills were merely the most basic pertinent pieces of information that allowed for a quick judgement of whether a mission was desirable or not. This allowed for quick assortment and distribution of missions.

Rui was surprised by the variety of missions within the defense class. The defense class of missions always sounded like it would be lacking in variety and diversity. But he was shown to be wrong. There were many types of defense-oriented missions within the class. Bodyguarding, guarding, transportation, patrolling and several other types. Even within these types, the difference in mission variables could lead to vastly differing circumstances of each particular mission.

This seemed to be true even with bodyguarding. The difference in the target profile could be huge, causing huge variations in the mission. Some bodyguard mission had targets who travelled a lot, this usually increased the graded difficulty of the mission from what Rui could observe. Static missions where the target of the mission largely remained within a smaller area made it easier to avoid variables that could not be accounted for.

Guarding missions were much more straightforward. The target was either a location or an object, usually not discreet. These jobs were generally of lower difficulty grades as well as lower renumeration.

What fascinated Rui was the transportation and patrolling missions. These missions were of much higher difficulty grades. Ranging in the layers of the defense class section that were closer to the center of the pentagon shaped library. Many of these missions were of much higher grades than what a newbie Apprentice like himself would be able to access. He wasn't sure how high or low his grade would end up evaluated to be. But surely it would be still be on the lower end.

These missions were extravagant because they were the kind of missions that only the upper echelons of the economy could afford and would afford. Who the hell would hire a Martial Artist to make deliveries otherwise? The rich had more than enough wealth to splurge on lower-realm martial Artists and were the only ones with enough reason to splurge on such ostentatious services. A lot of the wealthier clients of the Martial Union were in possession of objects or data and information that was extremely important. The transportation of highly valuable goods was also not a trivial matter. The possibility of targeted thefts and robberies were not low in such circumstances.

Rather than come out more sorry than safe, they reduced the probability of tragedies with Martial Artists.

Having had his fill with the defense class, Rui quickly made his way to the offense class of missions with engrossed eyes. He thought he knew what to expect, but he quickly realized he was wrong!

"Excuse me..." Rui called out to a support staff. "Why are there so few missions of the offense class?"

Most of the slots were empty! What was going on?

"You must be new here." He calmly replied. "Assault and battery are still felonies, even for Martial Artists. The Martial Union cannot accept civilian-commissioned missions of the offense class that are within the borders of Kandrian Empire."

"Yet there exists an offense class categorization of missions despite this..." Rui quickly connected the dots with the other information he knew, before coming to a conclusion. "Which means all offense-class are commissioned through Royal authorization, by the Royal Family..."

He recalled that the one of the clauses of the Kandrian Martial Covenant specified the exchange of Martial services, among other things, from the Martial Union to the Royal Family in exchange for funds, resources and privileges.

The staff member nodded. "That and foreign missions. But you're still a few realms too low for that option."

Rui figured as much, he put that aside focusing on the royal commissions. He knew that a lot of the laws still applied to Martial Artists, they merely gained partial impunity to the penalties; receiving much more authorized leniency from the judicial systems as far as sentencing went.

However, this did not necessarily mean that the offense class missions were lesser in number than the other class of missions. Running a country was impossible without state-sanctioned violence, the Kandrian Empire likely pawned off a portion of the less fundamental duties that involved assault like perhaps the war on the mafia and the black market of the nation.

If this was the case, Rui even thought it was a bit of a smart move on the Kandrian Empire's end. Both the underworld and the Martial Union were eyesores to the Royal Family. The best thing to do was to let them handle each other.

The only thing Rui hoped was that the Martial Union was charging the Royal Family a bomb of a price for this particular duty!