Rui had now entered the Exploration Stage! The Foundation stage had honed his physical, performative and Martial prowess. His body was honed to an incredibly high degree, his muscles were powerful but still flexible and mobile, his bones were dense and hardened, his skin and flesh were tough and rigid. This was in sharp contrast to his leaner, softer and weaker physique prior to entering the Academy.
He had now obtained a body worthy of taking the first step towards discovering his Martial Path. His performative capabilities, which were previously average, had now reached a more than satisfactory stage. His Martial prowess was quite impressive for a fourteen-year-old who had just reached the Exploration Stage.
As an Explorer, the colloquial title used to refer to novices of the Exploration Stage, a lot of changes had occurred to his curriculum. His training schedule would no longer be mandated by the Academy. He was given access to the Exploration Martial library for free exploration of novice Martial Art techniques.
However, what surprised him was that, although physical training was not mandated, the Academy did mandate a handful of theoretical seminars. This was not mentioned in the guidebook, so he was caught off-guard. Apparently, the Academy deemed it necessary to inform and educate the students on various matters while they were still in the Exploration Stage; not yet having discovered their Martial Path.
He understood their intentions. It was best to have general cognizance and a basic awareness of the Martial Realm; the world and industry of Martial Art, before they chose to join it. This would likely allow them to make more informed decisions.
Rui skimmed through a textbook on the Martial Union, the information provided in it was more detailed and specific than the general, vague and unreliable rumours he was otherwise used to running into.
“…Interesting.” He murmured as he digested the information.
The first section the textbook was the history of Martial Artists, as well as the Kandrian Martial Union all the way upto its current iteration and its socio-political and economical footing and role in the current state of affairs of the Kandrian Empire.
Martial Artists as a distinguishable class of warriors could be traced to nearly 500 years ago, as far as credible official records went. The current Martial Artist realm ranking system did not exist back then, but historians and anthropologists of the Martial Union estimate that the peak Martial Artists of that era were no more than Martial Apprentices, at the very most. Though, again, this wasn’t entirely clear due to insufficient data.
What was clear was that the emergence of Martial Artists broke a dent in the long-established age-old mechanics of power dynamics of the human species. Prior to the emergence of Martial Artist, the Panama continent was riddled with strife and war. Large stable countries, as a concept, didn’t exist. There were smaller settlements of humans, typically the size of the average modern town of the Kandrian Empire. These tiny kingdoms were in constant conflict to monopolize territory, resources, capital and manpower.
The rulers of these tiny sovereign states monopolized and maintained political power very differently than the models that existed back then. The state of technology more than 500 years ago was paltry and rudimentary compared to how far it had progressed today, Martial Artists did not exist back then, thus the power and significance of individual people was negligible.
Rulers maintained political power externally against their enemy sovereign states by capitalizing greater manpower and raising great armies of great numbers to deter war, and maintained political power inwardly through a combination of incentives and detriments.
“Much like Earth.” Rui mused to himself. Back on Earth, the impact of a single person was extremely limited, individual power was inferior to the power of many, as long as the power of the majority was harnessed and capitalized by rulers, individuals did not matter. This had also been the case for most sovereogn states prior to the Age of Martial Art.
However, that changed with the emergence of Martial Artists. At first, it wasn’t overwhelming, it tilted the scales of power just a bit. Martial Apprentices were powerful, but not enough to take down an entire sovereign state by themselves.
They weren’t entirely too much of a threat, thus it did not evoke extreme reactions from ruling parties. Instead, rulers grew greedy, and tried to monopolize and capitalize the emergent power of Martial Art.
Here was a new variable that could change the game and tilt the existing power dynamics in the favour of sovereign states that attempted to try to own Martial Artists, per se.
They used incentives and disincentives to manipulate Martial Artists who, as powerful as they were, in the front of social and economical benefits, were powerless individually.
Nearly a century had passed by as sovereign states perfected the art of handling powerful Martial Artists fully, exploiting and manipulating them.
The Martial Apprentices of this era were too strong to be ignored by rulers and ruling entities, yet too weak to resist them. They could not fully protect their families or even themselves from the full militaristic and economic might of an entire state, they were resigned to being nor more than unofficial slaves of their respective states.
This remained to be the case for almost an entire century; until an incredibly historically significant event one day occurred.
The first Martial Squire was born.
Martial Squires broke the previously established common sense.
One-man armies, they were.
p Although they couldn’t literally annihilate a huge army all by themselves effortlessly, their destructive power was fearsome, and rulers could not carelessly earn their ire. Their power was a deterrence.
Perhaps in a vacuum, rulers could potentially muster every ounce of militaristic, economic and political power and use every dirty trick in the book to defeat the Martial Squires of their sovereign states, but then what?
If they did that, their country would be incredibly weakened due to the civil war. Civil wars drained massive funds, resources of all kinds, and worst of all; they weakened militaries.
The surrounding sovereign states would recognize the opportunity, and immediately declare war on the now weakened nation and completely annex and dominate it.
This was even worse!
It was an unacceptable outcome for most rulers, thus new socio-political systems had to come into existence, and did indeed do so, to account for the growing individual singular power of Martial Artists.
Of course, it wasn’t as straightforward as this. The already chaotic warring era had turned into an even greater maelstrom as each of the countless nations tried all kinds of socio-cultural models and solutions to integrate, dominate or eradicate Martial Artists depending on the culture, the temperament of the ruling party and other circumstances.
Some succeeded in dominating Martial Artists, some failed and instead were ursurped by Martial Artists. Yet most sought to aim for cooperation. Countless nations fell and were consumed by the victors of the Warring Era. This marked the end of the Warring Era, and gave birth to a new era, the Age of Martial Art.
This was the story of Martial Art.