“Here’s the application form.” She provided him with set of sheets of paper. “Do you possess an Academic statement from the academics department?”
“I’m afraid not.” he shook his head. “Should I go procure one?”
“Not necessary.” She assured. “We can acquire the documents ourselves, it’s just the process can be expedited if provided. Still, it’s not an issue.”
Rui nodded before heading over to a desk reading through the application thoroughly. It had several pages, the first page was all about mundane and basic personal information. Name, age, date of birth, sex and other standard pieces of information needed by most applications and forms of this nature.
The second page was a bit more interesting. It was centered around his personal affinities as defined by him. He needed to describe his Martial Art, list out his techniques and preferences.
The third page asked him to list out preferred mission parameters; distance from Academy, mission timeframe, class etc.
The final page was a page of certain terms and agreements that he had to agree to in order to receive a license.
Rui speedily filled out the application form with a provided ink pen before eagerly returning it to the staff member.
“We’ll get back to you within the day.” She informed him.
Rui nodded, before a thought occurred to him. “Can I visit the mission library?” He asked.
“Sure, you can.” She assured.
Rui nodded, rejoicing inwardly. He immediately asked for directions before heading over to the mission library. The mission library belonged to a part of the Academy that Rui had never been to before, Rui recalled that he wasn’t allowed to enter this portion of the Academy when he initially toured it with Kane, specifically because he wasn’t an Apprentice. Once he had become an Apprentice he had completely forgotten about it.
“So, this place was the mission library huh?” Rui muttered to himself as he approached the large facility. The guards didn’t bat an eye at him after taking a look at his Apprentice uniform, as he entered the library. He opened the large doors and took his first view of the library.
“This is not what I pictured…” He murmured.
The mission library reminded of him a corporate office with immense paperwork, from his previous life. There was an immense amount of information squeezed into a tiny place.
The structure of the library was pentagonal, split into five sections each dedicated to a different class of missions. Each mission bill was placed vertically in shelves with its information as well as a brief description of the mission itself.
Each section representing a class was divided into ten layers, each representing a grade of difficulty of missions. Grade one missions were the easiest, whereas grade ten missions were the most difficult.
Each mission was coded with a certain set of coordinates, this corresponded to five copies of a large map of the town of Hajin and surrounding lands. The map was crisscrossed by numbered latitude and longitude in an elementary coordinate system. The coordinates on each mission bill indicated in what region of the map was the mission location, if any, was.
Each mission was also marked with a date of submission, indicating what date the commission from the customer was accepted by the Martial Union. This allowed Martial Artists to see whether the mission was recently accepted or not.
Each mission also had estimated timeframe indicated on it. Rui figured this is how Kane picked a mission that would last longer than the Winter holidays.
Another thing Rui noted was that were a lot of empty slots for mission bills in the shelves, in fact, a solid half of all slots were empty at this point in time. This indicated that a lot of Martial Apprentices, inside or outside the Martial Academy were constantly accepting missions and that the Martial workforce at the Apprentice-level was able to cope with the demand for Martial services.
This was a good thing. Rui didn’t think that it would be good for the Martial Union if the supply of these Martial services far exceeded the demand for these services, or if the demand for these services far exceeded the supply.
The latter was something he was less certain about. Perhaps Martial Artists were better off living in a world where demand for Martial services were astronomically higher than the supply, thus Martial Art would become a much more coveted skillset, and Martial Artists would enjoy a higher status in society. However, there would have to be extremely high amounts of conflict in a society for this to be the case. Rui wasn’t sure he wanted himself and especially his family to live in such extremely dangerous societies.
He was satisfied with the current balance of supply and demand. The demand for Martial Artists was still quite high in reality. There were several markets that provided missions; domestic markets, within the country. International markets from the many much smaller and weaker nations without a strong united Martial group or association like that of the Kandrian Empire. The Royal Family by the terms of the Kandrian Martial Convenant was also a huge regular source of missions that sustained the Martial Union commercially.
There was no fear of the demand dwindling either. The Panama Continent contained a vast number of countries, nations, states and smaller settlements and groups with an inconceivable amount of conflict of interests that bred a huge amount of the demand for Martial force. Furthermore, significant swathes of the Panama Continent, particularly towards the continent and heartland held incredibly powerful monster species that would annihilate all of human civilization if not for the collective Martial power of humanity.
A large number of missions were bred not by conflict but by greed for natural resources. Be it fauna, flora or land-borne resources within the depths of the continent. Most of these resources were housed in incredibly dangerous environments that only Martial Artists could tread.
The demand for Martial Art would never die, Rui concluded.