Daneel had been expecting something like this since the moment he had arrived at this sect, itself.
In every powerful force, there was always some or the other character who would think high and mighty of themselves, so much so that they would want to assert their dominance on anyone who visited the Sect from outside.
In the case of Daneel, he was actually a ripe candidate for someone like this to take pleasure in challenging and then beating him.
Everyone knew that Daneel was a King, and although this was only in the Central Continent, he was pretty sure that he would still be the target of jealousy.
After all, who wouldn't want to be revered thousands and tens of thousands of people?
All these people knew that they would probably never be in such a position. However, most were fine with it.
Some, though…would have too much of a superiority complex that wouldn't allow them to settle for the fact that someone from the Central Continent was greater than them in any aspect.
Hence…they would resort to these antics.
Folding his arms, Daneel watched as their guide slinked out of the room, leaving them alone in the vast chamber that looked like it had been built to house over a thousand people.
Chairs and tables stretched out in front of Daneel and his elder brother, and there was a bar counter to the right in which many kinds of wine could be seen.
Knowing for sure that he would be experiencing one of those clichéd moments where a cocky sect member would walk up to him with bravado and declare that he was nothing before proceeding to threaten him to step out of the battle, or risk being killed, Daneel decided to enjoy it with some wine.
He treated it like an interesting play that he would be idly watching, as he knew that he would mostly be crushing anyone who walked through the door without fail soon, anyway.
This wasn't overconfidence. No, it was just a simple admission of the truth by someone who had dealt with more than all these runts in the Sect could ever imagine.
He wondered whether he should flip out and try to maintain the grandeur of a King, but he decided against it, as that was usually what dumb protagonists would do: by being impatient, they would bring unnecessary problems upon themselves that could simply have been solved by biding their time and then striking later when the opportunity was right. Daneel planned to do just this, so when he walked over the bar counter and chose a random bottle of wine before conjuring two glasses and filling them, he had a neutral expression on his face.
Elanev followed, and it looked like he, too, had understood their situation.
Instead of taking the glass, he took the bottle from Daneel's hands and downed it in one go.
As he saw his younger brother raise an eyebrow on seeing this, he shrugged and said, "Ever since I've started this damn old man's training, wine has no effect on me. I need to get through at least a couple of bottles before I can start to enjoy it."
Nodding, Daneel made a few bottles float into the air.
With a flick of his finger, he broke them all and conjured another transparent, larger bottle into which all of the wine flowed.
As he handed that to Elanev, his elder brother beamed and said, "Oh, don't mind if I do. Thanks for making it convenient!"
A few seconds later, when a small group of people approached the room, this was the scene they upon.
A man was chugging a huge bottle that was half his size.
This would have been pretty peculiar in itself, but it didn't stop there.
That large glass bottle had no bottom, and as it kept getting depleted, the man beside him would make more and more bottles float into the air before shattering them and adding their wine to the large one that his friend was drinking.
Already, they could see that over a quarter of the wine that was typically meant to feed 50 people had been depleted, which made one of them who was an avid drinker step forward and shout, "Hey!"
'Glug, glug, glug'
That was the only response he got, as the two completely ignored him and continued their task, whatever it was.
The lover of wine was about to jump forward, but he was stopped by a tall man who stood at the head of their group.
"Wait."
Hearing this word, the man nodded and stepped back to his initial position, while the rest continued to watch, wondering just how much more this guy could take.
It was already commendable that he seemed to have more capacity than their Survival Master, who was a Peak Champion that was supposed to be able to drink more than a hundred people combined.
Initially, they were bored, but after a minute, astonishment was on their faces as they saw the entire stock depleted.
All that wine could have been drunk by 50 people, yet this man had finished this alone?!
Moreover, he didn't even look that woozy! As he threw aside the glass bottle which disappeared into the air, he even started looking around for more, which flabbergasted them and made them feel like running forward to hide the reserves stocked in the other bar counters around the room.
Daneel finally lay his eyes on them while they were looking at each other and whispering that this was supposed to be impossible.
He had already noticed them even before they had come with a hundred meters of the room, but Daneel had wanted to throw them off their balance by introducing this scene.
He had also been secretly hoping that they would attack, as he could then use a few nasty spells on them and say that he had acted in self-defense.
For example, there was a Hero-level spell that he had gotten from the third seal which would make one grow hair all over their body that would attract fleas strongly.
It was a prank spell, but it had been banned after it was used in a war to disable an entire company of foot soldiers.
The problem was that without the counter-spell, anyone affected by it would have their vitality sucked out, before dying and turning into a husk that was covered in a gigantic ball of hair.
Any spells that sought to change the flow of Energy in one's body like this were at the Hero-level, as that was the complexity required to do such a feat.
Daneel chuckled inwardly as he imagined 5 people covered with hair running around while panicking, after which he could secretly cast the counterspell and remove all traces. It would seem like a prank where someone had glued on hair, instead of making it grow.
He had no idea why he was thinking up something so elaborate, so as he thought about it, he realized that although he was ready to sit through something like that, he would be pretty irritated, and he wanted to act on that irritation instead of swallowing it up. With everything he had, he simply didn't have to.
Also, as Daneel watched them approach after being commanded by their leader, he realized that his earlier supposition that everyone in this Sect was rippling with muscles like this was some sort of extreme gym from back on Earth was wrong.
In this group, there were three different body types: of the 5 of them, two were buff like the others he had seen, but one of them was round.
Yes, round, exactly like a ball.
He walked like a penguin- putting his feet to the side in order to not wobble and fall down.
The other two were lean, and this group included the leader, who was at least 2 meters(6 and a half feet) tall.
Daneel and Elanev remained seated on the bar counter while the 5 approached.
Elanev had found one last bottle under the wooden counter, and as he was just about to open it and drink, the leader of the group walked forward and caught it, making Elanev glare at him fiercely.
Sensing that the confrontation was here, Daneel prepared to pull back his elder brother if necessary. He could tell that this guy was also a Peak Warrior, but he was…different. Although Daneel didn't feel danger from him, he could tell that this guy was definitely pretty damn powerful.
However…what happened next made the King understand that he should really not judge books by their covers.
Pulling away that wine bottle, the tall man took one out from his inner pocket.
Placing it in Elanev's hand, he said, "Normal wine does not affect us Fighters much. Try this."
Elanev looked at Daneel, who nodded after using the system to scan and verify that there was no poison in the wine.
The third seal also contained an exhaustive list of flora, fauna and their uses, so he was pretty confident that there wasn't any poison that could escape the system.
Elanev raised the bottle as if he would gulp it down, but he choked and immediately lowered it on taking just a single sip.
His eyes turned red, and he looked as if he had just drunk liquid fire that was burning his insides.
Daneel could tell that this was nothing to worry about. So, he just waited with a curious expression on his face.
Finally, when Elanev took a few gulps of air and finally managed to get back to normal, he looked at the tall man and sputtered, "What the f*ck was that?!"
The tall man had simple features, which would never stand out in a crowd. Of course, his height was distinctive, so Daneel and Elanev had to crank their necks up to see him.
Noticing that, he took a seat beside Elanev on the bar counter and said, "Firewine. Concocted in the depths of the mountain from Ether blocks and a special plant that only grows inside volcanoes. We have no active ones in Angaria, but the Twin Peak of the Sect is a dormant one. Each bottle costs 2 Ker Gems, and can be used for training, too."
If that was true, then this was definitely the most expensive bottle of wine that Daneel had ever seen.
Taking it from Elanev, he took a sip and understood why his elder brother had reacted like that.
It really did feel like fire was burning up his mouth, throat, and stomach, but when he endured past it, a high unlike any other struck him, making him want to leap up and go out to war, too, if needed.
Curbing that feeling and eyeing the bottle with appreciation, Daneel asked, "Who're you, and why did you want us to be here?"
Still with that smile on his face, the man said, "Names are unimportant in this sect unless one distinguishes themselves. You can call me Tall. These are Short, Round, Thin and Lean. I wanted to meet you because I want to work with you in the Legacy Battle."
Well, that was definitely strange.
Daneel pondered for a bit, and answered, "What is this Legacy Battle, anyway?"
The answer was given by Round, who had a deep, booming voice that echoed in the room.
"A Legacy Battle is conducted annually to shortlist candidates who are then mentored by the Chief, himself. The Battle, itself, is simple. Participants are thrown into a vast jungle where they must survive for 30 days. Champion level individuals will be going around acting as crazy individuals who kill all those they lay their eyes upon. The objective is to mimic the conditions after the Apocalypse, where our Sect Founder burst forth with potential in such an atmosphere to accomplish things which are still sung about to this day. The hope is that one who is worthy of taking forth his legacy will react similarly. No one knows how to win. No one knows what metrics are used to judge the participants. All we do know is that no one has won in the past few hundred years."
As Daneel heard all this, only one thought appeared in his mind.
What the f*ck kind of a contest was this?!