Three weeks passed. Yet Rui hadn't undertaken another mission. In fact, not a single person had seen so much of a shadow of him after he locked himself in his dorm room with a box of books.
No one knew what he was up to.
Yet everyone was admittedly curious. The feat that he and the other performed in their previous mission had only spread more and more. It was practically impossible to hide such astounding news, especially since it had been heard by a large number of people in the Apprentice post-mission facility who technically were not bound by any rules to keep what they'd heard a secret.
And even if they were, the word would have leaked regardless.
Not a single person in the Academy or the other Academies was unsurprised. Rui had gone from being one of the strongest Martial Apprentices of his generation to performing a feat that was unthinkable for the Apprentice-Realm.
Of course, they did not possess the necessary contest to understand that the feat was exaggerated and completely blown out of proportion and was far more grounded in reality than it sounded. However, not only did they not know, they did not care.
The remaining four Martial Apprentices had been harassed to no short extent. It had reached the point that Kane, Fae, and Hever had taken medium-term missions away from the Academy because they weren't being left alone.
Nel, on the other hand, simply attacked every single person that wouldn't leave him alone, resulting in him being penalized, since conflict outside the ring was not allowed.
Rui inadvertently avoided it by locking himself in his dorm room, he didn't know what was going on in the outside world, and he didn't care in the slightest.
He closed the book in his hand.
[Learning Vinfranese for the Advanced]
"Ok." He said. "I'm finally ready to begin."
In the past month, he had dedicated himself to learning Vinfranese. He had bought several learning books with the funds from his previous mission as well as a Vinfranese dictionary. He began obsessively learning the language soaking in the vast information and pouring it into his mind palace. It had taken him a while, but with his powerful mind and the Mind Palace technique, he had mastered the language in its entirety in under a month.
He closed his eyes, sitting in a meditative posture.
Yet he didn't see darkness, the mind palace he had built in his mind appeared. He immediately briskly walked over to a part of it where he had stored the research data of the research facility.
He opened the box, taking out the first log journal and opening it.
To his elation, the words were fully understandable. The document was structured quite similarly to how a research paper on Earth would be syntaxed. A section titled 'abstract' gave context and background followed by an introduction section that spoke more about the research project straightforwardly and then the body of the actual paper containing the actual data and research.
He immediately jumped in.
[45th autumn, year 406ME
Abstract: The Commonwealth Duchy of Vinfrana is a nation with a weak Martial Foundation. Due to the mass migration of Martial Artists of higher Realms to other nations, the secret to the breakthrough to the Squire Realm that was monopolized by those of higher Realms was also lost. Since then, none of the Martial Apprentices of the Duchy have broken through. Among the few scarce pieces of information on the breakthrough to the Squire Realm that has been confirmed is the fact that the breakthrough to the Martial Squire is man-made and man-induced...]
Rui paused as his eyes knitted in deep thought at the last sentence. In truth, he had come to realize that by himself. He recalled the way the breakthrough to the Apprentice Realm was talked about when he was in the Explorer Stage.
It was talked about as a spontaneous epiphany that could occur at any moment. It was a natural process that the brain underwent that could not be triggered consciously by one's self or others.
Then he compared that to the way that the breakthrough to the Squire Realm was talked about. Every time it was spoken about, it was treated as something that was... controllable. That was something Rui had caught sharply. It was spoken off as a process or a procedure of sorts, rather than a singular spontaneous event.
The document said that it had been confirmed that the breakthrough was man-made. In research, this was not a term that was used lightly. It meant there was conclusive proof that all pointed to the fact that the breakthrough to the Squire Realm was not a natural event but was something engineered and developed by humans to a certain extent.
That was something Rui found exciting.
How exactly did this work?
It almost certainly required esoteric technology, Rui was certain of that. But how exactly did whatever fantastical technology used allow Martial Apprentices to step into a higher Realm of Martial Art?
He couldn't wait to find out.
He dived right back into the document.
[Among the few scarce pieces of information on the breakthrough to the Squire Realm that has been confirmed is the fact that the breakthrough to the Martial Squire is man-made and man-induced. The breakthrough is not something that will naturally occur without human intervention. This is the reason that none of the existing Martial Apprentices and Squire candidates have broken through to the Squire Realm since the mass migration of Martial Artists of the Commonwealth Duchy of Vinfrana. This is the fundamental reason the Duke has invested a tremendous amount of funds into the construction of the research facility and Project Apotheosis.
Another piece of information confirmed is that Martial Squires possess physical parameters that biologically far exceed conventional human parameters. Martial Apprentices possess brains with superhuman parameters while Martial Squires exceed the bounds of humanity in nearly every measurable attribute.
If such an outcome can unfold due to human intervention, then the first hypothesis that comes to mind is a form of human augmentation, or perhaps more aptly; human evolution.
That is the foundation for the research approach of Project Apotheosis...]