The twitching continued unabated for a few seconds, before it finally stopped.
This made Raul feel relief, as this entire thing had been thoroughly creeping him out. The whole rollercoaster of emotions from where he had thought that he would die, to this stage where he was still kind of in shock, had resulted in him forgetting one very important thing.
The king had been the one who had changed into that thing!
Wait… Did that mean that the king had died?
Before Raul's thoughts could proceed farther down that lane, the Dragon actually… Vanished, and in its place, a man who was actually laughing to himself became visible.
It did so in the same way that Raul had seen before - it seemed to shimmer, and then it faded out of existence before being replaced.
As for that man, it was obviously the King of Lanthanor, and Raul couldn't help but feel shock when he saw that unlike the Dragon whose head had been cut off, it was the leg of the king which was currently detached and was bleeding profusely.
His face was filled with amusement, and he did not look at all like someone who had just blown himself up.
Little did he know that Daneel truly was amused, because he had expected this, but had still gone ahead, because it had been too tempting.
That memory that he had seen made Daneel understand the hidden capabilities of this Bloodline which could only be achieved by one continuously working hard for decades on end, and right away, he had wanted to try to for himself and see exactly why it was so difficult.
After all, theoretically, it seemed simple enough. He was just going to send his own fire instead of the fire from the Dragon Heart through its throat, and it should act exactly like a weapon with a different ammo. What could go wrong?
Besides, that image had been so damn breathtaking and cool that Daneel had wanted to replicate it right away, and his impatience had almost gotten the better of him.
In some things, Daneel understood that acting right away was best, and for once, he decided to go ahead instead of being the always safe and cautious man whose identity he had taken on for a long time. Regarding this, he felt the same way as he had felt about his scheming identity, because even though he had been perpetrating it for quite a long while in quite a serious manner, it didn't define him, and he loved to do other things just as much.
But first, Daneel had confirmed with the system the worst-case scenario, and this, coincidently, had included the scenario where his head might be detached - or, in other words, a situation where damage might occur that would lead to death.
The way he understood it, the power of Shapeshifters worked by using the resonance that was afforded to them by their Bloodline with the World to change the very make-up of their body into the form of the being they wished to mimic. The limitation with human Bloodline possessors was that unlike in the case of original Shapeshifters who didn't have many restraints on things such as time for which they could hold transformation and size to which they could transform relative to their own size, these limitations did exist, but although this limited their power, the power that they did get was still much greater than almost any that a Fighter Champion could obtain using traditional means.
During this transformation, certain body parts would be 'assigned' certain parts of the creature that one would be transforming into, and Daneel had been quite happy to find out that this exact allocation could be done manually at the time of transformation if one acquired the skill.
Typically, it would have required training, but Daneel had been able to use the system to quickly get what he needed and then simply tell the system which part he wanted to associate with which.
The head was obviously the most important part, and he had decided to allocate this to his leg, which meant that if any damage happened to it, then his leg would actually be the one that would sustain this damage.
This was apparently also a very understated advantage of Shapeshifters, as they would be able to hide their vital organs during transformations making it so that enemies would be hard pressed to find spots that they could use to target the weaknesses of their foes.
What typically happened was that all vital organs of the creature that one would be transforming into would be allocated to non-vital organs of the original body, and hence, the entire head area had been allocated to a leg, and the heart and a few other things around it were allocated to his hand.
The truth was that even though the damage looked as if it had mainly occurred in the neck of the Dragon, it had actually begun at the heart, and had caused a chain reaction which finally ended up blowing up that part. This was on display on his body, as his hand looked like it had been ravaged by various wounds which seemed as if they had been caused by explosions occurring under his skin, and even though it was not as bad as his detached leg, it still looked pretty grim and gory.
The system was already hard at work repairing all the damage, and even the wound in his leg had become ready to have the limb reattached. Daneel didn't even have to move, as the system to care of everything - it cast the spell to move the limb slowly forward, and soon, a cast had been conjured under which the healing continued to take place at a fast pace.
The breakthrough had also upgraded his body's healing properties, and so the spells were pushed on even faster. By the system's estimates, Daneel should be up and walking in a few hours, and this was pretty astonishing given the fact that just a few seconds ago, he had lost a majority of the blood in his body, along with having a major body part severed.
At first, Daneel had been skeptical about the feats that had written down in the records and about which he had heard from the system regarding Heroes being able to directly regrow even their head, in certain special cases, if it was lobbed off by an enemy and then destroyed. Most possibly, Daneel guessed that something like this was probably at work behind the scenes, with the vital organs being shifted around inside one's body so as to prevent death in extreme situations. If a Champion was capable of what he was seeing, then a Hero should definitely be capable of so much more.
It wasn't that he wasn't feeling pain, because the laughter soon faded, and it left him gritting his teeth due to the sting of so many injuries which couldn't be ignored. He had the option of asking the system to make him immune to it, but he didn't, as this was what he had been prepared for before he took his decision. It had been impulsive, but he had done it anyway, just like many of those on Earth who persisted in wasting their time and not doing anything productive with it even if they knew that it shouldn't be what they should be doing.
This pain would make this memory stand out to him whenever he even thought of anything like this, so all Daneel did was lighter it just little bit so that he could function normally instead of having to scream continuously like any normal person would be doing right now if they were in his shoes.
It was then that he finally laid his eyes and his opponent, and said, "Alright, fine, I lose, but you should know that you got lucky. I'll talk to you later regarding what we discussed. Oh, wait a second. It seems there is a message from your father. Maybe it's something concerning you."
As Raul heard this, he felt like pulling out his hair.
This guy had just shown him one of the most implausible things imaginable to anyone on Angaria, and he was shrugging it off and not giving any explanation. Was he doing it on purpose because he had lost, to take revenge by making him feel frustrated?
Raul felt like asking and insisting that he get at least some insight into just exactly what the f*ck had happened, and why, but he hesitated to take that liberty.
After all, he was someone who had newly come under the king, and he hadn't spent as much time with him as those others that the man treated very closely.
At first, Raul had been confident in his value as a Champion, but slowly, he was becoming aware of the fact that he might probably not be very special to this inestimable man who kept refusing to be bound by any sort of expectations and predictions.
Raul's ultimate goal in life was to kill a Hero, and for this, he knew that he should be close to the king, as the man also seemed to be a treasure chest of techniques that could defy all logic, which was visible in what he had just displayed.
However, he was never someone who would suck up to anyone, yet, at this moment, he felt himself being tempted to try and spend more time with the king so that he could also enter that close clique which seemed to have formed around him.
All of these thoughts were interrupted, though, when a grave expression came on the King's face, before he said, "Who are these idiots who have signed their own death warrant?"
There was anger visible in his eyes, and at this moment, the King of Lanthanor truly seemed like a Dragon become flesh, whose rage would not stop until its enemies' ashes had been scattered in the wind, never to be found, and forever to be talked of in hushed and scared tones.
Even Rayen, who had just gotten the reply through the communication trinket, felt a chill as he heard the king's voice, and he just couldn't explain why that was as he was supposed to be a Hero who shouldn't be so affected by someone who was still just a Warrior.
Shaking this thought away as he did not want to think about what it implied, Rayen said, "You know that I cannot expose any information about the identities of Heroes of the continent. This plan isn't covered by that oath, though, so I can tell you about it. And the other thing I can do, is go to the meeting and report all of the details. It should be soon, because Heroes are typically lazy beings who spend a lot of time training and passing time languidly, unless they find interesting, in which case they turn into the most energetic and spry of folk. Oh, what timing! One second."
Picking up the other trinket, Rayen checked it and said, "It's going to happen in a few hours. I'll keep an open line of communication, but there might be formations blocking it."
Hearing just a curt response, Rayen could tell that the King was pissed.
It was probably only him on this continent who would be pissed rather than scared in this situation, and once again, Rayen was reminded of his analysis of the king.
Unfathomable, and destined to leave them all behind.
The few hours afterward were spent with him getting back to the magazine which used to be printed 154 years ago but had stopped because it got too popular and was targeted by a government which wanted a share of the profits, resulting in the illustrator fleeing as he never wanted his work monitored.
After this, Raul headed to a location near the Kingdom of Arafell.
Soon, he was standing in an underground barrow with rotting corpses all around, and he couldn't help but cast a spell to stop the smell from making him nauseous before stepping forward to sit in a chair in front of a table that had already been laid out.
None of the others had arrived, but he heard a voice in his head.
"Welcome, old friend. The others will be arriving soon. You said you weren't interested, but you came first! The pain of losing a son is definitely something I can understand, because my son was killed by yours. Oh, I said we would bury the hatchet, right? It's buried. Anyway, I want to kill that upstart King, too, because I hate his smug face, so this is a golden opportunity to make it happen. I'm excited!"