Being a Martial Artist was not always easy. A lot of people who found their Martial Path were unable to tread deeply down it because they simply lacked the perseverance and dedication needed. Completing missions was not so easy when you were on the lower spectrum of the Martial Apprentice grade scale, you earned a decent amount, but that was about it.
That was a why a lot of Martial Artists turned to the underworld, there were many alluring fruits within reach, poisoned as they may be.
Kate Kole remembered the first time she sold a child. She had earned more than ten time’s what she would normally earn as a low-grade Martial Apprentice of the Martial Union. And it was trivially easy too, capturing a single child from the backwaters of the Empire and shipping them to the commercial hub of the town of Hajin and selling them in the thriving underworld of the town required very little physical effort from her, compared to completing the often long, difficult and tiring missions of the Martial Union.
It was addicting. The first time she had kidnapped and trafficked a child, the sheer ease with which she was earning a larger sum of money had pulled her into the Underworld. She would never be able to go back to being regular Martial Artist. She went around changing her name time and time again, Martha Myers, Jenna Jill, Ciara Carter and so on and so forth. She had amassed an immense amount of wealth.
Of course, the Underworld came with its own fair share of detriments. There was a saying that there were only ten people in the Underworld who weren’t exploited by someone else, the ten most powerful people in the Underworld. Everybody else below them served someone or the other and was at the mercy of someone or the other.
The moment she stepped foot into the Underworld, she was unable to escape. The demand for her goods was strong, and those that she had provided for would not let her go so easily. She was coerced to continue her child-trafficking business. Lest the Underworld sold her to the government once she was no longer of use, they had too much dirt on her.
Life in the Underworld was one of fear, fear of the Underworld, fear of the overworld. She could not stop trafficking children; she was not allowed to. She was constantly afraid that the Underworld she had stepped foot in would consume her, or spit her out into the open where the Empire would consume her instead.
Eventually, she had reached a stage where she was willing to give away all of the wealth she had built upon the heinous suffering of innocent children just to be able to sleep at night without wondering ‘When are they going to come for me?’.
Today, she realized, just very well might be that day.
She turned around in fear as she saw Rui pursuing her relentlessly. This wasn’t her first time being pursued by a Martial Apprentice. She was normally too fast for them to even keep up, she had managed to acquire many Apprentice-level maneuvering techniques in fear of being caught and mastered them to give her some sense of security. That in combination with her intimate familiarity with the town of Hajin allowed her to escape all her previous pursuers.
But not Rui. She didn’t quite understand why he was so unshaken in his pursuit, when he was trying so hard. He was a Martial Artist of the Martial Union, not the government, this must have been a commission from the Bureau, so why was he expending so much effort when the mission clearly was not worth it?
She didn’t know, but she didn’t care. All she knew was that she had to get away from him. As long as she kept running, eventually she would leave him in the dust.
Or so she thought.
No matter how much she opened up the distance between them, he was still somehow able to keep pursuit of her! Even if she went through confounding paths, he always found his at her back.
(‘He has a sensory technique!’) She cursed.
She would need to accelerate even further in order to get of his sensory range. This would take a long time.
A long time she didn’t know if she could last.
She hadn’t trained her body rigorously in seven years, and had let her body go with material indulgences. Her body had grown rusty, and her physical parameters had plummeted in the time that she had stopped training, more so than she had imagined. Her body had ached all over from stressing itself, her stamina was depleting already. Her lungs felt like they were on fire. Her joints felt like they were about to break apart and her bones felt like they were going to break. Her muscles were shaking with pain.
Rui on the other hand was unperturbed. His entire life, he had trained immensely, even prior to the Academy. Furthermore, once he entered the Academy, he had honed his body like a madman with his extreme potion tolerance.
He kept running, running and running some more, without ever faltering or slowing down.
Their physical foundations were in two entirely different Realms.
Kate had maintained hope that eventually Rui would give up but he didn’t. He just ran like there was nothing holding him back.
Soon, a quarter of a day passed, and the two of them had already crisscrossed and circled around the town of Hajin multiple times.
Soon, the moment had arrived.
CRASH
In her fatigued and strained state, Kate had stumbled on a rock and crashed hard into the ground, painfully.
Yet the fear she experienced far surpassed the pain.
She didn’t even need to turn around. She could feel the weight of his mind pressuring her instinctive and primal sense of danger.
“Aargh!” She screamed as Rui grasped her hair before she could even turn around. He didn’t utter a word, the glare in his eyes spoke for itself.
“LET ME GO!” She screamed. “HELP! SAVE ME!” She cried to the onlooking passersby.
CRACK
“AAAAARRRGH!” She screeched as excruciating pain shot up from her leg. She turned around and saw her shin broken cleanly, bent at a grotesque angle.
“LET ME GO PLEASE!” She grasped his knees.
CRACK
“AAAAAAHHHRRHH!” She screeched even more loudly as Rui cleanly crushed her second leg.
She no longer had any escape.
“HAVE MERCY.” She half-wailed, half-screeched. “LET ME GO!!” She banged her hands against him with some feeble offense-oriented techniques as he dragged her by the hair.
“I’m sure those children said the same thing to you.” Rui whispered, turning to glance at her.
The glare in his eye shook her.
“I may not be able to kill you, but it’s a long way to the Bureau headquarters. By the time we reach it, you’ll wish you were dead.”