The Martial Unity

Julian sighed. "Calm down. Also, take off that mask."

Rui had completely forgotten to take off his mask all this time. It was a mask that disguised his hair and eyes. "Ah, my bad."

However, before he could pester Julian again, the rest of the Orphanage had noticed his arrival and fawned over him yet again. As he drowned in a crowd of adults and children, Julian took his time laughing heartily at Rui's plight.

"Finally!" Rui exclaimed as he sat down opposite to Julian. "Alright, no more delays. Spit it out!"

"Calm down." Julian told him. "I've prepared a short summary and a more elaborate and detailed summary depending on how much you want to know."

He told Rui before extracting two documents of varying sizes, and handing them to Rui.

Rui's eyes widened as held the documents delicately, as though they were priceless artifacts made of glass. "This..."

"I have to say, it was truly an incredible read." Julian told Rui. "I learned far more than I ever imagined, and I'm still digesting all my gains. I have so many ideas that I would like to research derived from the research provided to me."

"I can imagine how beneficial it must have been," Rui told him. He knew the feeling, having been a researcher himself.

Julian nodded. "Even though their technology is much inferior to that of the Kandrian Empire, the knowledge and capabilities of the researchers involved surpass mine. The Commonwealth Duchy of Vinfrana truly went all out with Project Apotheosis, in all regards."

Rui nodded. "I can't wait to dig into it. Thanks a lot, Julian. Seriously, I can't express how grateful I am."

Julian smiled. "

Rui spent some more time at the Orphanage, having dinner before leaving for the Martial Academy.

Once he returned, he immediately locked himself in his room and began reading the quick brief report that Julian gave him. Once he finished that, he would move on to the more detailed report that explained the research

"Alright, let's see..." Rui murmured as he opened up the document.

[Introduction; The entirety of the research logs that you provided to me documented the inception of Project Apotheosis all the until the recent initial success of the project with subject SQ007. It documents nearly two years of reports and I'll be broadly summarizing the core of the research in a manner that is easy to understand for someone without a background in esoteric science.]

Rui nodded. This was indeed what he was looking for.

[The research begins with the inductive deduction that the breakthrough to the Squire Realm is something that is a) engineered manually b) Something that only Martial Apprentices viably undergo. Thus, the hypothesis emerges that the breakthrough to the Squire Realm is something with severe constraints that only some Martial Apprentices can endure.

A further deduction can be made that the constraint of the Squire breakthrough procedure is likely related to the brain. The reason this can be deduced is that the only physiological difference between Martial Apprentices and normal humans is in the brain. Thus, if there is a reason that the Squire breakthrough can be applied only to Martial Apprentices and not to ordinary humans would be because of the brain.

The final deduction made about the Squire Realm was that the breakthrough process was some form of human augmentation based on the fact that unlike Martial Apprentices, Martial Squires are augmented physically as well.

The fundamental research approach began by attempting to find the augmentation procedure via a brute force attempt.

For context, the avenue of human augmentation is not at all a new avenue of research by any means at all. The first recorded attempt at augmenting humans via the many fantastical esoteric resources in this world precedes the Age of Martial Art.

However, although many have tried, there hasn't yet been a successful attempt at mass production of augmented humans. The only successes have been extremely risky and fatal procedures with astronomically high mortality rates, or procedures with extremely high costs and needs. Many extremely large obstacles prevent the faint success of human augmentation from being even remotely mass-viable.

The research looked at a large variety of such existing means of human augmentation in hopes that Martial Apprentices could somehow overcome the large flaws and shortcomings that these methods had. Below are the methods that are primarily under the consideration of the research facility:

Varnardium Blood Refining Spongification: This is a method that purifies and energizes blood using a liquid esoteric known as Varnardium. The energized blood delivers its excess energy to all cells across the body, causing enhanced metabolic output. It's one of the earliest attempts at human augmentation. The following is an extremely oversimplified explanation, however, it should suffice for now. The procedure leads to a very temporary state of human augmentation; however, degeneration follows suit immediately after. The process causes the nervous system to degenerate until the connection between the brain and body no longer exists and the subject dies on the spot.

It's an inevitable outcome that the researchers hoped that Martial Apprentices would be able to overcome...]

"Interesting." Rui's eyes twinkled with interest.

He had already learned a lot even before delving into the report.

For starters, he had had no idea that the human augmentation field of research even existed. Let alone the fact that it existed for this long and was this widespread. He appreciated Julian providing him with the necessary contest that someone without a background in esoteric science did not possess. It helped him understand more about why certain decisions were made and how things came to be the way they were.

"Varnardium Blood refining spongification," Rui murmured. "Not an element that exists in the periodic table that's for sure."

The idea that a certain substance could 'purify' blood, whatever that meant on a bio-chemical level, and energize it to then distribute to all other cells across the body was truly fascinating. Rui even had a few ideas of what exactly was occurring thanks to his scientific background.

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