Chapter 1679 Choiceless
For the first time in a long time, Rui felt depressed. He heaved a sigh, heading home. There wasn't much that he could do, considering that he had made contact with all seven factions and directly contacted six of the seven candidates for the throne.
He wasn't sure what there was left to do. At this point, he could only hope to grow stronger so that by the time the Kandrian Emperor died and the cold war immediately heated into an active one, he would have the power to protect his family.
A war was incoming, and if he couldn't stop it or find a favorable side to take, then he best ensured that he grew strong enough to protect his family.
However, there were some things that he needed to take care of before he could do that.
'The annual fiscal meeting will start soon,' Rui realized. It had been a year since it occurred last time, shortly after he returned to the Kandrian Empire before he made his choice to plant seeds of his Martial Sect.
It was time for yet another fiscal budget allocation meeting. This time, a motion to instate Rui as a member of the Fiscal Committee would be raised, and hopefully, Rui could get enough support. Once he was done with that, he could raise the motion to secure a budget for the dissemination of his Martial Art.
Once that was done, he could pretty much kick back and relax.
'Though the budget regarding my future sect will probably come much later in the meeting,' Rui realized. The way the meeting worked was a little strange and different from what Rui had expected. It wasn't as though different drafts of budget allocations were proposed, nominated, and then finally voted on.
There were several rounds of voting.
The first round was voting on the budget allocations between offense, defense, maneuvering, supplementary, and miscellaneous.
These four allocations covered pretty much all Martial Art. Masters would vote for one of the four, and the share of the annual that each of the four categories would get would be that of the share of total votes they received.
Thus, if one of them received twenty-seven percent of the vote, they would also receive twenty-seven percent of the budget.
Essentially, this was a system that was designed to be reflective of the will of the Master Realm of the Martial Union.
Once the four categories were decided, there would be votes for each individual category on how the budget ought to be allocated within each field to its various sub-categories. The one that Rui was concerned about was the miscellaneous category. These were for Martial Art that could not be cleanly divided between offense, defense, and maneuvering. For instance, a balance-oriented Martial Art was equally and simultaneously in affinity with offense, defense, and maneuvering.
Thus, the Martial Union had decided that it was less messy to give its own category than try to forcefully divide them across the other four categories.
The three major sects were relevant only in the first round. The Fire Sect would do its best to earn as many votes for offense, the Earth Sect would do its best to earn as many votes for defense, and the Lightning Sect would do its best to earn as many votes for maneuvering.
While sects like the Breathing Sect would vote for the supplementary choice. Rui wasn't obligated to vote for the supplementary based on his deal with Master Vericita. He was to vote for the Breathing Sect when it came to voting within the supplementary category.
This voting session would continue for many rounds until it covered all major allocations. After that, the various research and development departments could choose how to spend the budget allocations themselves.
Rui found it curious that no Martial Sage took part in this little meeting. Perhaps this wasn't worth their time. Perhaps they had enough self-awareness and cognizance to realize that their presence would skew things too much in the favor of their sects and other important fields of Martial Art would be disenfranchised.
Frankly, he found it a pain. But he decided to bear through it.
In the meantime, it was time to continue through with his four domain techniques. They were coming along nicely.
He was especially looking forward to the final version of Malevolent Kitchen. He immediately headed to the Jrava Mountain Range, looking forward to training. He just wanted to immerse himself in training and forget about the gross mess of the Kandrian Throne War. He was really frustrated and resentful of the seven prime princes and princesses. Why did each of them have to be extreme in their own ways? Why couldn't there be any reasonably powerful prince or princess?
There were other princes and princesses. Yet they were so insignificant that neither the Martial Union nor the Beggar's Sect felt the need to even acknowledge their existence in the information that they had prepared for Rui. It meant that there was no point in even talking to them. Rui did not live in a fantasy world; he was a pragmatic man for the most part. Perhaps he could be one of the prime princes or the other an edge over their peers, but he could not close the titanic gap between nobody-princes and princesses and the seven prime candidates.
He shook his head, removing the matter from his head entirely. Weeks passed by as he immersed himself in training with Master Gurren, fulfilling his tutoring obligations with Prince Raijun, and training Master Gurren to master the telescope domain technique that he had prepared for him. The Master had made considerable progress and was on the cusp of mastering it, much to his delight.
These three matters consumed his entire time for the most part, allowing him to fully hone in on what he needed to do to grow stronger as a Martial Senior and take more steps towards the next Realm and Project Water.
Soon enough, the annual fiscal allocation meeting had finally arrived.
This chapt𝓮r is updat𝒆d by (f)reew𝒆b(n)ovel.com