Chapter 1804: A Martial Gamble

"It is disgraceful that a superior Martial Senior like yourself is so unwilling to take your rightful place as leaders of human civilization."

A man sitting opposite Rui in his office remarked with an ugly expression.

"I am willing to ascend leader of the Kandrian Empire," Rui lied. "Why else would I bid for the throne?"

"You're doing it as a member of the royal family! Not as a Martial Artist!" The man barked. "In all of human history, nay, in all species in the world. The strongest rule. It is the natural order. Anything else strains human civilization as we move away from a natural power hierarchy!"

He glared at Rui, uncaring for his royal status. "You care about harmony? The best way to reach harmony is to put people where they naturally belong. The strong at the top and the weak at the bottom. Because human civilization naturally tends to a natural hierarchy of power, this is the most stable and harmonious form of civilization!"

Rui heaved a sigh as the Martial Supremacist lectured him about his ideological doctrine. "Yes, because the civil war that would be triggered the second someone tried to make Kandria a Martial Supremacist nation sounds very harmonious indeed."

His sarcasm was palpable.

"Some amount of chaos and heat is inevitable as society returns from this perverted hierarchy to its natural state!" The man barked. "But once it does, it will be extremely stable and harmonious."

"If by extremely stable, you mean reduced to ruins, then yes, I might actually agree with you," Rui narrowed his eyes. "I don't think you understand how destructive even a single Martial Senior is. The Kandrian Empire has one thousand five hundred such Martial Seniors. A Kandrian civil war will not be a war; it will be an apocalypse."

This was the impact that Martial Art had on human civilizations.

Back on Earth, even in the modern era that Rui had died in, revolts, revolutions, and coup d'etat could and did occur without reducing a nation to rubble. It could and did occur without causing enormous destruction. Oftentimes, they occurred without a single person dying because the overwhelming power of the insurrections quickly seized control, and nothing changed.

This was not the case in the Panama Continent.

Any civil conflict that occurred between powers within a nation almost always involved Martial Artists, who were essentially walking tanks, sentient fighter jets, and living weapons of mass destruction.

Thus, civil conflict in the Panama Continent was exponentially more destructive than on Earth. It would be analogous to governments on Earth deploying nuclear weapons inside their own territory.

"It cannot be allowed," Rui narrowed his eyes.

"Hmph!" The man snorted. "Destruction precedes creation. The destruction of this flawed system of power is necessary for us to return to the natural order."

Rui grew disgusted by what he heard. "Get out."

"You will never ascend the throne, Final Prince!" The minister declared, leaving his office. "I will do everything in my power to ensure that."

For a moment, Rui felt the urge to kill him then and there, barely restraining his impulsive thoughts.

Rui heaved a sigh, pressing a button on the communication artifact on his table. "You're telling me that man was the most open-minded high-ranking government official of the Raijun Faction?!"

"...Unfortunately, yes, sir," The director of his analyst division heaved a sigh. "He was at least willing to visit our headquarters and speak with you. The others would not even bother engaging in a discussion."

"Damn!" Rui cursed.

He had just spoken with three of those who were considered to be the most open from all three rival factions, and not a single one of them was willing to abandon their ideological doctrine or join Rui's faction.

He steepled his fingers as he sunk deep into thought.

He had seventy-seven supporters.

He needed just one more.

Just one more out of the remaining twenty-six.

Unfortunately, only one of them was willing to join his faction but was bound by a restrictive, permanent exclusive contract.

The remaining twenty-five were hardcore, ideologically beholden government officials who didn't listen to reason or incentives. If the minister he spoke to was the most open- minded Martial Supremacist of Raijun's supporters, then there was absolutely no hope in trying to make any of the others defect to his faction.

He closed his mind as his mind furiously raced into thought.

A year had passed since the five-year deadline he had.

With every day that passed, the probability of him successfully healing his father was reduced.

"We could expand our legal division and work hard to find a small potential loophole that they missed," His director of finance suggested in an emergency meeting that Rui had called to deal with this dilemma.

"In the worst-case scenario. We could just wage a war against the allied princes' factions, get our hands on Prince Raijun, and force him to void the contract," another advisor remarked.

"How about compromising Prince Raijun and conceding to implement some Martial Supremacist ideals? Maybe then we'll be able to get him to void the contract."

Rui shook his head. "Those ideas either compromise too much or are too unlikely to succeed and not wroth pursuing due to the time and energy it takes."

He narrowed his eyes. "What I need...is a solution that does not lose me anything while delivering to me the final high-

ranking government official I need."

It could not require a deep compromise.

It needed to have a high enough probability of succeeding to be worth pursuing.

It could not consume a lot of time.

"...Something Raijun agrees to without demanding a definitive compromise," Rui realized. "That really is the only way to get this done quickly and have a high enough chance to succeed."

Rui's eyes lit up, swimming around as a germ of an idea formed from the many possibilities that he furiously analyzed. "What is his greatest desire?"

His advisors glanced around at each other with confused expressions. "The throne."

"Yes, but what is his greatest desire born from his desire for the throne?" Rui asked, his tone growing more jubilant.

The others stared at him, confused.

"It would be the desire that I was gone, at least, gone from the throne war," Rui continued, growing more energetic. "What if I offered that to him in return for his voiding of Minister Kramen's contract?"

The others stared at him like he had lost his mind. "Offer to forfeit your campaign for the throne in return for the final supporter you need for the throne...? That..."

That made no sense.

"Not an offer," A grin appeared on Rui's face. "A gamble. A gamble where he stands to gain my forfeit of the bid for the throne, and I stand to gain Minister Kramen. Yes, this is the only way to gain Minister Kramen's official support without wasting time or necessarily compromising anything."

His words shook the entire room.

None of them understood what he meant.

Rui was the only one who did.

His grin widened. "Not just any gamble. A Martial gamble."