Chapter 853 Winner



Rui did not want to read the documents on the populated first floor where they could be run into by a random adventurer at any given point in time. He did not want to use read all the documents with Void Step because that was just a pain in the ass to do.

Instead, the two of them went to the fourteenth floor where they were isolated from the others.

Rui gave Kane a suit this time as well since it would take some time. Soon enough, both of them had completed their preparations.

"Alright, I'll begin," Rui quickly opened the box of documents, beginning to go through with them.

The first one detailed the basic background of the Exploration Department of Deacon Industries. According to Guildmaster Bradt, Chairman Deacon had created the department within twenty-four hours of the discovery of the Shionel Dungeon. The moment he had gotten the news, he immediately realized that this would probably change the supplier-consumer markets of esoteric substances forever.

As the most dominant force in the international market of many large esoteric supply industries and sectors, he needed to make sure that he did not lose the ensuing war that he had predicted would occur.

Rui expected nothing less of Chairman Deacon, although the economic and political capital accrued by this man was not on par with Guildmaster Bradt, he was still unquestionably the most powerful individual in the Shionel Confederation, and that was true for a reason.

The following documents went deeper into the operations and protocols of the exploration department of Deacon Industries. Rui was impressed with the sheer complexity and sophistication of the system that Chairman Deacon had come up with.

The man did not simply go for a bone-headed strategy where he simply dumped a large sum of money and resources into exploring every nook and cranny of the Shionel Dungeon mindlessly. No, the system that he had set up in place worked heavily in tandem with the Dungeon Division of the Intelligence Department.

This division was focused on gathering any and all information about the dungeon by gathering reports from contracted and partnered Martial Squire adventurers, as well as other Martial Squire adventurers that were involved with Deacon Industries. The division gathered a gigantic reservoir of information before conducting thorough data analyses on the stated reports, even managing to create highly rudimentary and imprecise maps of certain sections of the dungeon and timelines of certain events based on reports.

The frequency and density of monster sightings were correlated with the presence of a floor and proximity to it.

Based on this, the Dungeon Division of the Intelligence Department evaluated the avenues of exploration with the highest probability of being near an undiscovered floor. The Exploration Department would begin by evaluating the difficulty of each of the avenues of exploration, and sort out which avenues would receive how much of the large, but ultimately limited, explorative capital that Deacon Industries had.

With that out of the way, the explorative operations would be devised by the department and the teams would set out to execute the operations. The results of the initial explorations would have the Exploration Department re-evaluate the allocation of capital before further exploration endeavors were conducted. This was a permanent cycle.

What Rui was interested in was the actual methodologies of exploration that the dispatched teams of Martial Squires used. After all, that was what he needed to know if he was to manipulate them into stumbling into the fourteenth floor.

"Oh…? Interesting…" Rui murmured as he read through the documents. "Quite unique."

Apparently, the exploration teams of the Exploration Department of Deacon Industries use markers based on extremely potent esoteric substances that allow them to track the exact paths that they already explored previously.

"If the markers can be tracked even in the dungeon then they must be extremely potent to even partially resist the jamming effect of the Shionel Dungeon," Rui murmured.

He raised an eyebrow as an interesting idea entered his head.

"If the only bearings they have on what routes they were exploring are the markers, then this can be exploited," Rui smirked.

The fact that the Shionel Dungeon completely jammed the magnetic field of the planet meant that the natural internal compass that many species evolved to have was completely shot. On top of that the highly restricted senses and the uniformity of the dungeon meant that it was extremely easy to completely get lost in the dungeon very easily, one could think one was traversing a path that they normally traversed, but in reality, they could be traveling in the exact opposite direction and they would never realize it.

That was why the Exploration Department used cutting-edge path-tracking esoteric technology that would remain at least a little effective even despite the jamming nature of the Shionel Dungeon.

"…It would be a real shame if someone relocated those markers to manipulate the direction that the exploration team set out on, wouldn't it?" A mischievous smile rose on Rui's face. He didn't think he would find his winning strategy to have the exploration team stumble on the fourteenth team so soon. As long as he got all the details right, he could easily manipulate the exploration team to stumble on the fourteenth floor by removing the markers embedded into the land and placing them along a route that would lead to the fourteenth floor, or as close to it as he could.

"They will naturally come to discover the location as long as I get them close enough," Rui noted. "Though I probably shouldn't change the locations of the markers too drastically, that may evoke suspicion from the analysts of the Exploration Department of the Shionel Dungeon."

A combination of making the other paths undesirable to explore and relocating certain key markers, he ought to be able to cleanly redirect one of the exploration teams to the fourteenth floor.

"After that, we just have to kick back and watch as Chairman Deacon does all the back-breaking hard work for us," Rui smirked.