The Martial Unity



"I swear…" Kane chuckled. "There has probably been no one in history who has been as creative with clearing dungeons as you have been."

Kane couldn't help but think back to the many remarkably creative and unusual solutions that Rui applied to get things done.

The one that stood out the most, of course, was when Rui used the water of an entire floor to astronomically increase the rate of exploration of the Shionel Dungeon, discovering twelve dungeons in a single day. Who could possibly claim to be able to do such a thing?

"I need to trace a path from this floor all the way to the Root floor," Rui murmured.

In order to lure them away with his heat, he needed to find a pathway that was large enough to accommodate a large number of pythons that were aggressively eager to reach any heat. This wasn't something he could do on the run after already luring them out, he definitely needed to plan things ahead of time.

"Alright, see ya," Kane nodded.

Rui nodded before exploring his surroundings with Riemannian Echo, mapping the entire area with his senses.

"That should do just fine," Rui murmured as he spotted a giant tunnel that seemed to be headed downwards, immediately sky-walking towards it.

After a while, it appeared that his fears of the tunnel being a dead-end weren't true, he soon began experiencing a familiar sense of pressure.

('I'm getting closer,') Rui's eyes narrowed.

He had experienced this pressure many times in the recent past, having visited the Root Floor to get a good understanding of the capabilities of that part of the Shionel Dungeon.

About a few hours later, he had found what he was looking for.

He didn't even need to rely on the Riemannian Echo to sense the Root.

The frozen atmosphere told him everything he needed to know. The avalanche of pressure that crashed onto him, warning him not to go any further, it told one everything one needed to know about the Root.

('I just hope that the heat my hot air pipe generated will be hot enough for the pythons to ignore the overwhelming sense of danger,') Rui sighed. Though he wasn't too sure how that would be true. He needed to get a solid grip over himself in order to stay put and ignore the warning sirens that Primordial Instinct was giving off inside his head.

It was unfortunate, but there wasn't much he could if it turned out that this wasn't the case. There were only so many ideas that he could come up with inside the dungeon with the limited resources that he had.

"Welp, just gotta hope I'm lucky," Rui paused as he found a tunnel pathway that opened up to the Root floor. Having completed his objective, he immediately turned around and headed back up the way he came up, eventually returning back to the python floor.

"Found what you were looking for?" Kane asked.

"Yeah," Rui nodded. "You use Void Step to cover us, while I use hot air pipe to heat the path that I want them to follow. If all things go well, it should be smooth."

Rui wasn't as certain about that, but he didn't comment. The good part was that there wasn't much to be lost, they weren't particularly risking their lives or anything of the sort, not to a particularly high degree by their standards.

Even if the pythons didn't end up inside the Root Floor like Rui wanted them to, at worst, he would not gain something he hoped he would. He wouldn't lose anything he had already gotten.

On top of that, the esoteric ore deposits were theirs for the taking unless they got extremely unfortunate.

"Alright, let's begin," Rui nodded to Kane.

Kane placed his hand on Rui's shoulder and the two of them disappeared into thin air.

Several seconds later;

THWOOM

The pythons froze before cocking their heads in the direction of Rui's target, before immediately dashing towards it.

Rui and Kane promptly began moving away from the pythons as Rui continuously heated up a path for the pythons to swiftly follow the two of them guided all the pythons through the tunnels that Rui had found leading all the way down to the Root Floor. The tricky part for Rui was to keep lighting up the path as he guided the pythons to follow without facing the way they were going.

Kane had to pay attention to the direction that Rui was moving too and adjust his technique to work in that direction. The misdirection of his technique was an active element and Kane needed to know what direction he was moving in, in order to use it.

Thankfully, the two didn't need to hurry and could take it slow, by Martial Squire standards, and slowly but thoroughly lure the snakes into the Root Floor.

The bad news was that even when he was going at a decently fast speed, it took him several hours to travel the entirety of the path to the Root Floor. With the slow pace that they were currently traveling at, it took them nearly an entire day for them to get near the Root Floor.

('Now comes the rough part,') Rui sighed inwardly. He could only hope for the best. The pressure from the Root Floor had already begun washing over him.

He glanced at Kane to reassure him that they were fine, but to his surprise, Kane was unperturbed.

"You seem to be handling it well," Rui told him before blowing out more crackling hot air.

"Handling what well?" Kane raised an eyebrow.

"You know, the pressure,"

Kane furrowed his eyebrows, turning towards Rui with a quizzical expression.

"The pressure from the Root Floor?" Rui asked once again with a confused expression. "You're handling it like a champ."

"What pressure?" Kane glanced around briefly, before turning back to Rui.

Now Rui was beyond surprised. "You don't feel any pressure?"

"I literally have no idea what you're talking about,"