Alaster sat down at the table. Lunaria was already there, giving him a smirk that he had long since learned meant that she was planning something that would annoy him in some way. When he first figured that out, he had tried to avoid her, but that only seemed to make the end result so much worse.

The last time she had given him that evil smirk, she had set up an elaborate trap involving a trip wire, pullies, levers, and a bucket of paint. Ordinarily, such a trap would have been easily seen and avoided by Alaster, but Lunaria had distracted him by asking what dress would look better on her.

She held up two different dresses and gave him a flirtatious look, confusing him just long enough for the paint to land on him.

It had taken several hours of scrubbing for his Undead Workers to get the paint out of his clothes and even longer for Alaster to get it all out of his ears.

Azemar had ‘punished’ his daughter for the prank by making her clean the paint off the floorboards, something that she finished in less than an hour.

The worst part, in Alaster’s opinion, was that both dresses would have looked great. Lunaria was a beautiful woman. Her silver hair gave her an aura of mystery and grace. At least until she opened her mouth. She could joke with the drunkards of any bar. Yet she could also converse politely with any of the Nobles.

Azemar sat down, interrupting Alaster’s thoughts, and the lesson began.

At this point, without going into depth of each individual Noble, Alaster had finished his education about Nobility. The issue? Alaster struggled with keeping his emotions in check. He could easily conceal them, but if something pissed him off, he tended to react to it before he thought. Such a fault would easily be exploited by any experienced Noble.

Azemar gave him a few exercises to practice, which Lunaria occasionally helped with, but she was given her own lessons. While Alaster would soon be leaving Galmore, it was Lunaria’s home. As the City Elder’s Daughter, she needed to know everything about the ruling class.

A few short hours later, Azemar casually sent his daughter on a few errands while giving Alaster a pointed look, telling him to stay.

Once the young woman had left with the usual pep in her step and a song being hummed, Azemar turned to his pupil.

“How are you liking our city?”

“Fine? It’s peaceful, despite the constant attacks. The people are content and there doesn’t seem to be much conflict. The little crime there is tends to be non-violent.”

“Remind me, how long has it been since you joined us?”

Alaster thought for a moment, “Nine months, three weeks, and four days.”

Azemar rolled his eyes, not really wanting an exact number, “And in that time, you haven’t really been able to fight, have you? I imagine you’ve grown quite rusty. Even if most of your power is invested in your Minions, you should always be capable of fighting your own battles.

I know about the Lich your Undead have been chasing around. I had intended to destroy it, but then you attacked it. I let you handle it, figuring that it would help how you manage your army.

In truth, the size and strength of your Undead Army has now reached a point that even my own Minions would struggle to defeat it.”

“Your Minions are more surgical anyway. My Undead are powerful in numbers, but against a powerful foe, they are lacking. They also aren’t the brightest when they aren’t under constant supervision.” Alaster had long since suspected that Azemar knew about the Lich, so it was not a surprise in any way.

“My point stands. Regardless, while your Minions have slowly gotten stronger and more numerous, even if you haven’t been able to keep up with the losses over this prolonged war of yours, you personally, have been lacking.

Your progression has been knowledge, which is vital as you know, but we can’t neglect the physical aspect.

Your opponent is the Noble who took your sister, but despite their internal fighting, if an outside foe threatens one, they threaten all of the Nobles.

Meaning that your opponents are the Nobles of Lissura. Which in essence, means that you are contending with the entire Nation of Lissura.

You are capable of eliminating an entire army of Adepts and a few Experts. But the forces the Nobles can and will employ are mostly Experts and a few Adepts. Either way, they will be elites of their work.

Dozens of the Nobles can field their own small armies of these elites. You cannot fight them directly. You know this, hence the lessons, but you will have to fight. You will have to wage battles that remain secret and hidden.

And as you said it yourself, your Minions are not suited for such conflicts. You will have to fight many of them yourself with only a few select Minions to aid you.

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Honestly, I personally believe that its foolish to try. The power they have at their disposal is not just in their military might. They have a variety of Enchantments that will hinder you while benefiting them. And that’s before they employ a bunch of Holy Mages to eradicate your forces.

But there is one other threat that I have not really gone into much depth about before. The Lissurian Royal Family. Do you know why this is?”

“Because they hide away in their castle. They keep control of their kingdom through the Duke and a handful of other administrators, but they keep themselves isolated.”

“Do you know why that is?”

Alaster shook his head.

“They have their own personal Dungeon. A Unique Dungeon that has five levels to it, growing more difficult the deeper they go, and allowing them to exit practically on a whim. The time difference in the Dungeon is fifty to one. Fifty hours in the Dungeon equals only one in the real world.

This Dungeon allows them to train themselves and those sworn to them. The Royal Guard is contractually bound to the Royal Family. They are quite literally unable to act against them. This Guard numbers five hundred, no more, no less. And each one is an Elite Expert.

I am not exaggerating when I say that the Royal Guard is perfectly capable of razing Galmore to the ground, and there wouldn’t be much we could do. The Guard would lose a large percentage of their number, but it would be inevitable.

These Royal Guards answer to no one but the crowned King. They are also fervently loyal. Even without the contract, they would die for the King. Quite frankly, if the Guard is ever sent to kill you, there is nothing you could do. With all your power, all your strength, all your blessings and body, your best chance would be to flee. Flee as fast as you can, abandoning everything.

Even then, the odds of escape are minimal.

Despite that, they mean nothing before the King himself.

You know of Masters, you had the luck of being trained by two of them. The number of Masters are unknown. There are simply too many places they can hide and with their Abilities and strength, waiting several decades at a time does not mean much to them. You sparred with both Aila and Richter, you knew they were holding back. But did you know that both weren’t using even a tenth of a percentage of their power? Less than a thousandth of their power, and you were still being tossed around like a doll.

Both Aila and Richter are powerful Masters, worthy of note even among the Monsters we call Masters. But the King of Lissura? He could defeat both of them at the same time with a single hand.

Even worse? He is still growing stronger. The Dungeon his family controls is still unconquered! In the centuries of its management under the Lissurian Royal Family, the family only recently reached the Fifth Level.

I do not know what is inside the Dungeon, but I do know that the last time the King, a Monster among Masters, just a small step away from becoming a Demi God, tried to defeat the Fifth Level, he failed, and returned with countless life-threatening injuries.

He is still recovering from his injuries, which is the only reason your plan has any chance of working. The Royal Family has always holed up in their Castle, but since the King’s defeat, it has gone into lockdown.

I would prefer more time to teach and guide you, but the King is healing. It will take many more decades before he is fully healed, but even on his deathbed, he could kill you and your entire Undead Army with just a finger. Right now, his reach beyond his Castle is limited, in a few years, it won’t.

Which is why I limited your time here to a single year. If you delayed any longer, your minimal chances would become impossible.

I do not know the exact timeframe, but when you arrive in Lissura, it is crucial that you find and rescue your sister as quickly as possible. Because if the King leaves his Castle, and decides he doesn’t want to bother with you; you will cease to exist before you can do anything against it.”

Alaster sat there, digesting this information. He had already known that there were magnitudes of power that he hadn’t even witnessed before. The strongest he had seen in action were Aila and Richter. Yet what they had shown him was not even close to their real power. But to now hear that even their full strength was nothing before the King of Lissura…Alaster had told off the God of the Dead, but his heart had not beat as rapidly then as it did now.

He had conversed with a God, and had a learned about Demi Gods, but he hadn’t seen either of their actual power. And what little he had heard about, had no frame of reference.

Experts were considered the true power of a nation. He had previously compared Masters as being able to destroy an enter city by themselves, but now, it was more apt to say that a single Master could wipe an entire Nation off the map.

Ranks were exponential. Masters were considerably stronger than an Expert, even if the Expert was only half a step away from reaching Master.

If Masters could destroy entire Nations, just how powerful were Demigods? And what were they contending with if several dozen was still considered too few?

In just twenty minutes, Alaster’s view of the world had expanded. If the average person saw the world through a keyhole, Alaster had already been looking through a window. Now, it felt like he was looking through an open doorway, but had not even begun to see the world on the other side.

‘So that’s where it ended up.’

Belgroth spoke up. Human civilization did not interest him, so he had been talking less. He only occasionally gave advice to Alaster about his Weaving. Even the private talks he had with Sedall, which Alaster could have listened to, but chose to respect what little privacy the two souls had, were becoming less common.

‘Where what ended up?’ Sedall asked, much of this was not news to him. As a Demigod himself, he had already understood the power differences, he simply was unable to impart that wisdom to Alaster without an appropriate reference that he would understand.

‘Remember how I told you guys that I liked to experiment? Well, from what Azemar was talking about, the Dungeon that the Royal Family has been hoarding, is technically mine.

It’s my Laboratory.

With the vast number of experiments I had going on at the same time, some even as large as a castle, I needed a large space. I separated it into five levels depending on their impact on the world. Level one had things that could change Nations. Level three had things that could shape continents, before the war reduced all but one to dust. And Level Five had things that could shape worlds.

Of course, I had security measures in place, which I suspect this King was fighting. Because if the experiments of Level Five themselves got out, the space around the Dungeon would contort into a Black Hole that would have swallowed the continent whole.

Come to think of it, Alpha Red Four should have activated, nullifying all of the Experiments, when I died. If they are still functional, that might be a problem.’

‘Might?’