"That's huge!" Kane's eyes widened. "Are you serious?"
"Dead serious," Rui grinned. "Furthermore, there are no monsters. This is a gold mine it seems. Still, we should use Void Step regardless, I'd rather not go without it."
Kane put his hand on Rui's shoulder as he activated Void Step and the two of the sky-walked down in the direction of the tree.
That was when it went wrong.
The branches of the giant tree lashed out toward the two of them at a shocking speed, rocking the very atmosphere of the floor as it shot toward them, reaching them in an instant.
The piercing power of the branches was high, and it surely would have impaled them effortlessly had it actually hit them. Yet it didn't the two barely managed to avoid lethal, incurring only a few light flesh wounds.
They immediately leaped back, shocked.
Kane had reacted because evasive maneuvering was the very core of his specialty. His reflexes, agility, and speed greatly surpassed even Rui. He too had mastered Primordial Instinct a few years ago, and because of extreme compatibility and synergy as well as Kane's own inherently swift reflexes, the technique worked far more powerfully in his hands than it did in Rui's even with the Mindmirror Symbiote.
Rui, on the other hand, managed to avoid it, because, unlike Kane, he saw it coming from much further away thanks to his Riemannian Echo. However, the Riemannian Echo was a reading technique rather than a sense, thus it was slower, which prevented Rui from completely avoiding the attack.
The two of them grimaced as they stepped back.
"What the fuck?" Kane cursed as he covered his wounds.
"That… was unexpected," Rui's expression turned grim. He didn't bother with his wound, his healing would heal them up soon enough. "The tree has a protective mechanism, apparently. It does not allow people to get close by. That much alone is not shocking."
Dungeons also possessed such a feature but it was limited to threat levels above a certain degree. Even the Shionel Dungeon possessed such a trait. It was the whole reason that only Martial Squires were able to enter the Shionel Dungeon while Martial Seniors and above weren't.
That wasn't what shocked the two of them, really.
"What is shocking is that it detected us while we were using Void Step!" Kane gasped.
"Yeah, that's really bad news," Rui grimaced. "Our model of success relies on your Void Step quite heavily. Frankly, without it, we're not that special."
That wasn't entirely true. Rui's methods of fighting monsters in the Shionel Dungeon were very effective and there was no way that that would disappear with the Void Step being effective. In fact, Rui had developed those means of fighting the monsters in the Shionel Dungeon because of scenarios where they couldn't rely on his Void Step.
Although he hadn't predicted this particular scenario, he had predicted that there would be instances where they would have to discard the technique. In those instances, the two of them needed to be able to handle themselves.
"I don't get it," Kane grew a little flustered. "How on Earth can it possibly detect us through Void Step? Are its senses just that incredibly sharp?"
"No," Rui shook his head, having already analyzed the matter. "It's because the tree probably doesn't even have consciousness. Its defensive mechanisms are purely reactionary. It is closer to a machine than a sentient being. The Void Step technique relies on misdirecting attention and focusing in the opposite direction of the direction the user is moving in. However, that won't work against something that does not have any awareness that can be misdirected in the first place."
"Damn," Kane cursed as he understood what happened. "So that means that it is super resistant to my technique."
"Not even super resistant. It is literally categorically immune to misdirection completely," Rui told him. "Even if you were a Martial Senior, you would have no chance of successfully using misdirection against that tree."
"Damn…" Kane sighed. "Now what?"
"Based on the fact that it only attacked us after we approached it, its defensive mechanisms are triggered by a range condition," Rui analyzed the circumstances that they were in. "I highly doubt that there is any route to the esoteric ore deposit sitting under the tree that avoids getting attacked. Still, we can definitely give it a try. There are probably several things that we should test in general before we come up with a way to get past the annoying defense mechanism system of the tree."
Rui glanced at his flesh wounds, verifying that they had nearly entirely healed.
"That sounds like real fun," Kane remarked flippantly, feeling deflated. He had been quite hyped that they had finally found a floor after half a day of searching and scanning. Yet the moment they did, it turned out to be a floor where he was entirely useless for the most part. He had no way of contributing beyond Void Step.
He clenched his fists. ('I can't be this weak forever.')
Of course, he was aware that given that he hadn't even spent two years in the Squire Realm, his current strength and capabilities were quite impressive by the norm. Groundbreaking even, considering that Rui's Hungry Pain had allowed him to achieve new heights that surpassed even what a prodigious genius like himself should have been capable of.
But he long stopped caring about comparisons to the norm. He wasn't interested in the norm. When he looked at Rui, he couldn't help but feel useless. Not only did he create brand-new powerful techniques on the fly like they were nothing, but his growth rate was staggering even when compared to Kane. On top of that, the sheer amount of competence, knowledge, insight, and foresight that he had shown not just during their time in the Shionel Dungeon, but also during the mission on Vilun Island.
Although he wouldn't admit it out loud, half the reason he grew stronger was to avoid being left behind by Rui.