Hearing the almost predatory tone in the King of Lanthanor's voice, Drakos had to take a few seconds to answer.
Indeed, Daneel's desire to get a bloodline was pretty strong right now, and he was very enticed if there was a possibility that he could obtain it without much effort.
However, when the Ancient Dragon spoke after a few moments, he realized that that was not the case and sighed with a little bit of frustration.
Why couldn't at least something be easy? Did it always have to be so hard?
"Young King, I'm afraid that's impossible. A bloodline can only be bestowed by the living member of a Godbeast race. Before you ask- I've already checked your body- you were born of common descent, so there is no prominent bloodline in your body. Of course, due to the intermingling of bloodlines over the ages, there is a very minuscule concentration of various bloodlines present, but it is too little to amount to anything. Coming back to your friend's recounting of the private message given by the essence of the Black Raven, which is something that perhaps, only you, apart from the Emperor, must have heard, mainly because he had always insisted on the utmost secrecy in all matters regarding bloodline possessors, I urge you to focus on the part regarding 'duty'."
As he heard Drakos speak, it was almost like the Ancient Dragon was desperate to distract Daneel, so that he wouldn't focus on this topic.
At this moment, Daneel could bet that if it were anyone else but this Ancient Dragon, they would have been able to do the same without giving rise to suspicion.
Yet, this innocent Empire Spirit was just not well-versed in using any means like these.
Hence, Daneel could tell that there was something here which Drakos did not want him to dig deep about.
At first, he wondered whether he should press the issue to try and force the dragon to speak, but Daneel decided against this idea.
He did not want to put the Dragon in a position where he might have to lie to him.
Whatever this was, it seemed to be a personal issue, so Daneel decided to either find out using other means, or confront the dragon with enough information so that he would have no choice but to spill the beans.
As for completely letting it go on account of the dragon always being helpful?
That was not an option at all, as the bloodline was just too important.
So, acting as if it had worked, Daneel recalled what Faxul had said.
Indeed, the part where the Godbeast had said that power wasn't theirs, alone, to hoard, and that it was their duty to pass it on, was pretty interesting.
There were a lot of possible questions that could arise from it. For example, was it possible that there was a different species of even greater power on this continent, itself, that the Black Raven had been referring to? Or was it possible that these Godbeasts were tied to some being that wished the power to be passed on?
Whatever it was, Daneel soon realized one thing: this was far above his pay-grade, so to say.
So, all he could do was add them to the ever-growing list of mysteries to be solved, and move on.
With this matter settled, the two of them spent a night reminiscing about the old times, specifically regarding the years in the Academy which had actually been relatively quite calm and enjoyable.
As a Champion, Faxul's body could take any amount of alcohol, and Daneel had a Hero-level spell which dispelled the effects of the alcohol perfectly. So, both of them just enjoyed the taste of the wine and the kick they got each time it hit their gullet till the morning, following which Faxul departed to begin the preparations in the Black Raven Kingdom which were for the case where the Empire Spirit of Axelor accepted his proposal.
As for Daneel, he, too had some work to do.
Ideally, by this time, he would already have traveled to the Big 4 to collect data, but Axelor was just too important a factor in the continent to ignore.
As they had the chance, he was determined to at least set in motion the plan to tackle them, before leaving on the journey of data collection.
Even though his endgame regarding the third seal was to unite the Black Raven Kingdom and the Hidden Kill Sect under him, thereby creating a unified force where it would be easy to reach the level required, he still placed a heavy focus on all the schemes he had implemented to ensure the happiness of the people.
He had also gotten an inkling that it was better to be safe than sorry. From what the Head had said, there had been times in the past where only three forces had been present on the continent. Yet, the seals hadn't been broken then, at least, according to the history of the continent he had seen in the Goddess's Sanctum.
For now, everything was running smoothly, so he decided to seek out Eloise to discuss a recent idea he had gotten regarding something that would really increase goodwill among the citizens.
He already had a Bank. And one of the major operations undertaken by banks, at least, on Earth, was to give various types of insurance to people.
There was no such system in Angaria, and even though there were a few similar plans in the list of the Emperor, none of them encapsulated the essence of insurance.
And that was…safety.
If he could give his citizens the assurance that their family would be looked after even in the event of their death, he was sure that satisfaction level might just shoot up even further.
At least, it was definitely worth a try, and regardless of whether it impacted the satisfaction level or not, Daneel was determined to see it come to fruition.
The second advantage, of course, was that the people of his Kingdom would have something to fall back on after they retired.
Excited, Daneel went to the vast underground 'Hollywood' that they had built, as he knew that there were definitely pitfalls in this idea that he could avoid if he could discuss it with someone. For this, there was no one better than Eloise, whose understanding of the people and the Kingdom was unparalleled.
When he did implement it, he did not want the flaws of the original system on Earth to be carried over. If that happened, he would definitely be ashamed to call himself someone who had transmigrated.
However, to his shock, for the first time since he had known her, Eloise avoided him.
As he was in command of the formation governing the whole area, he had appeared directly beside Eloise, who had been handling the shooting of the most popular show in Angaria right now.
She had been startled on seeing him, and instead of greeting him with the usual smile that would always come on her face whenever she saw him, she had actually…turned away, and had even tried to cover her face.
Of course, nothing could miss Daneel's eye. Even though it had only been a moment, he had seen that her eyes had been swollen and red, as if she had been crying.
In a muffled voice, she had said that she needed to finish the shooting, and that she also had a lot of other stuff on her plate right now.
Daneel had been struck speechless. For a few moments, he had only been able to stand there, sputtering and wondering whether he was dreaming.
He had no idea what he was supposed to do. She had practically been trying to ignore him, which didn't make sense, at all.
He wondered whether he should directly ask what the problem was, but he knew that this wasn't the time and place.
So, he decided to wait until she was free, before coming to find out what the matter was.
Thoroughly disturbed, with a frown on his face, Daneel teleported away, and if he hadn't been so distracted, he would have seen the hurt in her eyes when she watched him teleport away.
He did observe her again after leaving, but all he saw was a woman devoted to her work.
This left him feeling very, very unsettled, even more so than when he had discovered that a bunch of Warriors were invading Lanthanor.
For the rest of the day, Daneel went about all his tasks such as checking up on the schemes, his commanders, and the Domination Corps robotically, as he kept recalling how Eloise had looked.
Finally, at night, Daneel was just about to go to her again, when he received a message from Faxul.
"Daneel, it worked! He asked me to come to the same spot as before, and he said that we could discuss the particulars inside the Kingdom, as he already has a lot of defensive formations in place. And…he asked me to do right now!"
This managed to drive Eloise off of the center of his mind temporarily.
He had expected the Empire Spirit of Axelor to dally for days, so it was pretty surprising to see him accept after only a single day.
Regardless, this was their chance.
Without hesitation, Daneel said, "Good. Stay right there. I'll head over right now."
It was possible that the Empire Spirit might keep a close eye on Faxul, so Daneel didn't want to risk him coming back to Lanthanor now.
So, using the Hero-level camouflage technique, Daneel headed over to his friend, following which he repeated the same thing that he had done before, when he had infiltrated the Kingdom of Arafell as a rat.
Splitting apart a tiny part of his consciousness, Daneel entered Faxul's mind, and the both of them set off to Axelor.
The beauty of this plan also lay in the fact that this was a perfect method to evade all the detection formations that might have been set up.
Detection formations only endeavored to find out the maximum level of complexity of an organism entering them. Here, the consciousness of the Black Raven, a part of which had been transferred from the pedestal to Faxul's mind without disturbing its slumber, would make it appear as if all Faxul's body contained was some being at the level of a Hero.
So, Daneel could sneak in easily.
As they arrived at the border, he couldn't help but feel expectations rise inside him as he finally prepared to find out just what kind of place the Kingdom of Axelor was.
King Safiros once again appeared, and only greeted Faxul, who was once again in the guise of the old King, before leading him inside.
Daneel did tense when they passed through the formation surrounding the border, but seeing that they raised no alarms, he inwardly exhaled a sigh of relief.
He could see and feel everything Faxul was feeling, so he could tell that although his friend had gotten tensed, there was an underlying calmness that could almost be envied.
The Baptism…really was extraordinary.
Yet, all such thoughts were driven out of Daneel's mind after a few seconds, when Faxul looked down during their flight to the capital to view a town on the way.
Daneel had looked forward to seeing unique customs or people, but the first thing that reached their combined vision almost made Faxul pause with shock.
It was a large poster of Daneel, himself, in the center of the town, on which the netizens of the town were throwing all kinds of nasty stuff.
Globes of dung, eggs, dirt, and various other things impacted his face, which quite accurately depicted his features.
Noticing his interest, the Empire Spirit chuckled and spoke.
"Hehe, just a little ploy to make sure that that brat can never succeed at turning the people of this Kingdom, even if he succeeds in somehow entering it. They all think he's responsible for all the purges being carried out, as he wants to conquer them, the same way that he 'conquered and enslaved' Eldinor. I swear, time has only made all these people dumber than they were during the Empire. It's so easy to manipulate them! A whisper here, and a casually smuggled in newspaper there. That's it! Oh, I can't wait to see how it'll be when a village gets massacred by soldiers touting his name. Maybe they'll start burning him! Or maybe I should think of something even more creative…"