The latest battle between the Martial Union and the K'ulnen Tribe had reached the ears of all the Martial tribes on Vilun island. The manner in which Rui had downed a promising K'ulnen Martial Artist had impressed many Marital Artists. Some found it to be absurd, while others were shocked. There were some who even wanted to challenge Rui to a fight to test themselves against someone of his caliber.
The battle marked the escalation of the conflict between the Martial Union and the K'ulnen Tribe. Now that not only had the first Squire battle been fought, but Squire blood had also been spilled, the battle would no longer go back to being fought between Martial Apprentices.
Of course, Martial Apprentices would still be involved in the conflict, but their conflict would wrestle around less important avenues and assets of the many reasons that there was friction between the K'ulnen Tribe and the Martial Union.
The more prime reasons such as the war over the hunting and water sources, as well as claims over secondary and extended territories, would now be fought by the Martial Squires of both sides.
The Martial Tribes had their primary territories which were the lands that their villages occupied. However, the Martial Tribes did not tolerate other Martial tribes getting too close to their village. For example, if another Martial tribe tried building a village just a kilometer away from an existing village of another Martial tribe, the latter would most definitely do everything in their power to drive away the intruders.
They were territorial and did not tolerate other entities and groups infringing within their direct domain of influence.
This was the reason that the Martial Union could not build their settlement on the Vilun mountain even though there was plenty of space. The Vilun mountain fell within the domain of influence of the G'ak'arkan Tribe and thus the Martial Union's attempt to build a settlement on the mountain would not be tolerated. It would definitely be a source of intense conflict between the G'ak'arkan Tribe and the Martial Union.
And it was one of the sources of conflict between the Martial Union and the K'ulnen Tribe.
"And that is the point of today's conflict," Rui said out loud.
He eyes his audience, which consisted of the Martial Squires of the Vilun settlement.
"This is the first Squire-level conflict that consists of more than just a few Martial Squires," Rui told them. "There's going to be a lot of chaos, and unlike the previous Squire-level conflicts that we've had with the K'ulnen Tribe it is much harder to control the flow of the entire battle, or plan the entire battle as well as we'd like to."
It has been a week since the first Squire-level conflict between the Martial Union and the K'ulnen Tribe. Since then, several clashes had occurred featuring more than one Martial Artist. Rui had partaken in a portion of them after carefully planning and making all the preparations that need to be done.
He couldn't just enter the battlefield rashly. After all, he was targeted far too aggressively and hatefully. The K'ulnen Tribe identified him through his build, not to mention the overpowering aura that he was projecting thanks to the Mind Mask technique. He was still a grade four Martial Squire at the end of the day, maybe grade five at best. Any Martial Squire at a higher grade would be able to fight and eventually overwhelm him. Since the K'ulnen Tribe was fooled, like everybody else, that he was an extremely powerful Martial Artist, they would undoubtedly send especially powerful Martial Squires to take him down if they ran into him in combat.
He had experienced something similar in the Serevian Wars, the only problem was that back then he was actually strong enough to deal with even such measures, but this time he definitely was not.
This meant that he absolutely could not get any close to any of the K'ulnen Martial Squires for more than an instant, otherwise, he might suffer grave damage. In order to be able to do that, he needed to make much greater preparations in advance to close the gap. He spent a greater amount of time analyzing the Martial Squires of the K'ulnen Tribe, sharpening his predictive models. There was no upper limit to the degree to which a predictive model could predict the target, the more data it had, the better it was.
However, because he didn't have much time, he needed to cut down on the number of targets that he had.
He looked through all of the data that the Martial Union had on the K'ulnen tribe. Especially, he scoured through the conflicts that they had partaken in and the Martial Squires that had been respectively deployed in each of those.
By organizing and tabulating the parameters and nature of their battles vs the parameters and nature of the Martial Squires that were deployed in those battles, he was able to develop a predictive model for the Martial Squires that would be deployed in any given battle, given that he had access to enough information.
This was not part of the VOID algorithm, of course. What he was doing was employing the same branches of statistics and probability that were used to create part of the predictive capabilities of the VOID algorithm.
This allowed him to anticipate which Martial Squires were likely to be deployed Knowing that, he could make more extensive and deeper preparations for the Martial Squires that were likeliest to be deployed against the Marital Union.
('They're pissed off at me, so they won't fight back half-heartedly,') Rui knew that. But he was actually somewhat happy to know that. Since it meant that he could make better preparations due to having access to better information regarding his opponents.
"Be careful, this battle is going to escalate the scale of conflicts once again," Rui reminded them. "If things go as planned, then it's entirely plausible that this conflict will reach the Senior Realm."
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