The Martial Unity

Later that day, Rui and Kane headed into the Shionel Dungeon, to the first floor. As always, Rui brought out an entire suit that covered his entire body, donning it before passing one to Kane.

"Again?" Kane asked with an exasperated sigh.

"Guildmaster Bradt is relentless," Rui insisted, digging up the box of documents.

FSSS

The sound of a gas escaping the box reached their ears as Rui paused. "Hah, I knew it. He would try the same old stinking trick again."

Kane had to admit that Rui was right, shrugging.

Rui quickly took the document to one of the latest floors that they had cleared that hadn't been discovered yet, before Rui quickly skimmed through all the data in the documents, mindlessly inputting them into his Mind Palace to read properly later on.

Rui incinerated the documents and boxes to ashes before storing the suits in his dimensional ring as the two of them returned back to the inn.

"So?" Kane asked once Rui had some time to parse through all the data that he had collected from Guildmaster Bradt.

Rui grimaced. "It'll take them too long before the closest adventuring team will have traversed far enough."

Kane tutted as he went deep in thought. "So… What do you want to do? Maybe we should just have faith in Guildmaster Bradt in winning the elections."

"Nope," Rui immediately rejected the idea. "I do not wish to leave things in the hands of others I cannot trust. Guildmaster Bradt is definitively highly competent, but that's far from enough."

"So what do you plan to do?" Kane asked seriously.

"I'll have to go with one of my earlier alternative plans," Rui replied. "For example, Stealing checkpoint trackers from other exploration teams before using them to extend the path of one exploration team so that they could reach the Root floor."

"That sounds like a lot of work," Kane muttered.

Rui would need to travel calculate the amount of distance that he would need to add to an exploration team's path, and then steal just the right amount of checkpoint trackers to add to the path.

"Yeah," Rui sighed as he got up.

"Where are you going?" Kane raised an eyebrow.

"To get started of course," Rui replied. "No need to waste time. It'll be quicker if I go by myself this time, so you can stay back and relax."

"Alright, I'm not complaining," Kane shrugged as he reclined back. "Have fun doing all that tedious manual labor."

Rui shook his head with a wry smile as he left the inn, heading for the Shionel Dungeon.

He already knew everything he needed to do since he possessed a map of the Shionel Dungeon inside his head, while also possessing the exploration routes of the various exploration teams.

('There are so many of them that it makes my life easier. Thank god for Chairman Deacon being so aggressive in his exploration in his hopes of trying to match me,') Rui was glad that Chairman Deacon had invested this much into setting out hundreds of exploration teams on different exploration routes.

Such a large number of exploration teams could effectively match Rui's own explorative capabilities in the Shionel Dungeon. It was why they had managed to obtain success that matched Rui's own success.

('Only took merging basically everybody into a single force,') Rui snorted.

The difference between their explorative capabilities was that they had greater range, but the quality of their exploration was low, while Rui had a more limited range, but could sense everything within that range.

Rui quickly dove deep into the Shionel Dungeon as he swept across the many routes that Deacon Industries was exploring and stole checkpoint trackers from the very end of their routes.

('I need about a hundred and eight of them,') Rui calculated the number he needed based on the maximum distance between the checkpoint trackers.

He made sure to take only one tracker from each route so that he didn't significantly shorten any one particular route. He also couldn't take from routes where he found the exploration team still actively searching.

All in all, he had spent more than half a day inside the dungeon, gathering everything he needed from as many exploration routes

He quickly headed down to the exploration route that he had chosen to redirect, painstakingly relocating hundreds of checkpoint trackers in the paths that he deemed necessary and fit, allowing him to change their path into a tunnel that led them straight down.

Then he stacked the extra checkpoint trackers to extend the route further and further down. The deeper he went, the more he began feeling an overwhelming sense of pressure as his Riemannian Echo could sense the creepy roots extending from the Root as it began digging up esoteric ores for consumption and delivery to the rest of the dungeon.

He steeled his mind as he got further and further to the floor.

Until he was merely fifty meters away. That was a good distance to drop them off, he then made sure to seal off any alternative routes that they could take that could detour them from the Root Floor, forcing them to go through the tunnel that would open them up to a massive cavity that was once a completely filled mine.

Three-quarters of a day later, his work was finally done. He steeled his will as he prepared himself for the final step in his preparation for taking down the Root, and claiming the final floor of the Shionel Dungeon as his.

The data that he would get from the Deacon Industries' raid from the Root Floor would give him the final piece of the puzzle and would allow him to confirm what he had been wanting to know for quite some time now. Whether the plan to take down the Root that he had devised would actually work or not.

With this move, he had set into motion of series of events that would bring about the end of this saga, one way or another.