I was suddenly hearing his voice as he asked this question as if it was a devil's whisperers, but as i thought more and more about the current situation, i can't help but think that he might indeed had a point .
All the teleportation leading to Troland got already destroyed, all the the ways that i can got there by was cut off and even the opportunity to go there by flying was also unrealistic, so i really might have no choice but to follow his arrangements, after making sure that they might be really able to produce the desired target .
" So what exactly do you have in mind, you can't believe that i will just appear in the Real World and began scheming from the shadows like how the Demon Emperor did .
That what exactly are you going to do, but instead of doing it from the shadows, you will do it openly with no need of trying to be discreet about it .
" I know that you don't want me to be killed or any ill thing to fall on me because of you, so why don't you stop acting all mysterious and explain what kind of plot you had in mind already .
He smiled smugly and said :
My plan consist of two initial steps, picking anyone of those steps should allow you to stop the Demon Emperor from sacrificing the heroes and bringing more demons to this land, the first step consist of you
taking advantage of how things currently were going in both this land and the Real World and use your influence to oppose the Demon Emperor decision in the council .
For that you will need to win in the family internal competition then you will become a prominent figure in the family, preferably you will have to take control over the whole family, using your new prominent position you would be able to state your thoughts on the matter without much of a problem, if you decided to do that we will back you up in the council when the time comes, if we were lucky and another 5 or 7 more votes in favor of our opposition, the Demon Emperor will have no choice but to accept his defeat, but this was an extremely low probability .
I stopped him from continuing any further and said bewildered at everything that he just spouted out of his mouth :
" What family, whose family ? .
You didn't believe that i would give you my blood essence now would you, of course i used that Dorell family member's blood essence to help you in transforming like this, ~Slap~ damn it, it was the only option i had on me .
Before he finish saying what he have to say i smacked the other cheek of his, both of the cheeks were now swollen with a few cheekbones broken in both of his cheeks, it should have left him unable to talk anymore, but i guess he can't stop surprising me with his many talents, it seemed that even before running into me, he was still quite accustomed to get beaten .
I held nothing against that Dorell family member, i already dejectedly made peace with the fact that i was now a Demon, but if i was recalling correctly wasn't that family a branch family to the much stronger main family and both of the two families were under the influence of the Demon Emperor, so even if i managed to fool all these people and enter the family and win the said competition, how would it be possible for me to convince all of those guys old and young to go along with my wishes .
I hit him because he turned me into this and because he didn't have a plan nor did he ask my opinion before going ahead and do something this reckless, i wonder if he had masked his intentions of hurting me like how i keep playing him, or did the binding contract final judgment counted his actions as none threatening actions .
I then proceeded to ask him about all those concerns that i currently have, but he actually had the nerve to stall me up, telling that i should wait until i heard of the other steps that he thought of first, i wanted to slap his face once more, but i guess i will have to just keep that urge inside me for the time being and at least until his face get healed, he no longer was smiling like before, his expression was grave as he continued to say :
The second step or plan of mine was one that should allow you to deal with the heroes matter at hands, it was related to you going as fast as you could possibly go, back to Troland and either rescue all the heroes or get rid of those demons pulling the strings from behind the scenes, but i believe that this was an impossible plan to execute due to your inability of having enough Mana to allow you to make that trip .
Wasn't he just stating the obvious, i had heard him say the exact same thing for over 3 times now, i Instinctively began rubbing my two massive purple hands together and him seeing me doing this made him continue to say in a hurry :
This problem was quite easy to be solved, we will go to Devons and i will be able to restock a huge some that should be enough to sustain your trip to Troland, but there were some technical problems with this course of action, you really need to learn a Mana refining technique and you have to be at least proficient with it to be able to make the trip successfully and you will also have to put in mind the fact that you would need Mana from now on pretty much to do anything, so whatever the choice you will make, you would still need to be backed up by enough strength, meaning Mana to implement whatever you decided on doing .
Otherwise you won't be able to reach your destiny and even if you were able to reach it, you would be exhausted to death and you most likely won't be able to come back unless the teleportation tablets were fixed, the lack of a technique to refine your money can be quite deadly, but luckily you preserved most of your original strength, so your physical body is quite formidable, so even if you were in a dire situation and lacked Mana, you would still able to make up for it, if a fight were to break out .
But that wasn't the case with everyone, unless you reach the level of Great Emperor, your stamina will always be quite the problem, so if you wanted to take the second choice, you will have to hope that your savory is quite good, but even if you a genius it would take you at least weeks or even months before you began comprehending it, so if you were to choose that course of action, you should prepare yourself to study hard, or else no matter how many Mana Stones i can able to get, you will end up wasting half or more of it .
For some reason, i felt that he didn't want me to pick this Step as he called it up, for what reason i don't know, but if it will give me a chance to finally take a close look about what those Mana Refining Techniques, i'm pretty much willing to take my chances, saving Hana was currently the only priority i have, no matter what i will have to do or go through, i will do everything i can to stop that Demon Emperor plan from being implanted .
After i strengthened my resolve about this i looked at him waiting for him to finally tell me about that third step that he was suggesting for me to take, but i saw that he was looking at me as well in silence, yet seeing me keep staring at him like this for over 5 minutes straight, he suddenly blurted one word :
What ? .
~Slap~, lucky for me and unlucky for him, his left cheek which was swollen before had to some extent healed, so at him acting stupid, i couldn't help but try to remind him that it wasn't the time for him to act funny in the the most familiar and nicest way as possible, after getting hit again for no particular reason he hissed at me, seeing him hissing i was about to hit him one more time so i raised my hand while saying :
" What do you mean what weren't you saying that you have three Initial Steps that i could make, are you feigning ignorance now, well i well just need to remind you then .
Don't hit, don't hit, i didn't mention the last step since you being able to do it was even more impossible than the previous one .
Seeing that my hand still hadn't come down, he hurriedly began to explain that third step of his, saying a bit dejectedly :
But since you want to know about it, i will satisfy your curiosity then, the third step would be you stealing or destroying the special container that held the Source Energy, stopping them from being able to open the rapture in Troland for quite some time, at least until the Demon Emperor send some with the next batch of demons or monsters sent from the Real World to this land, leaving you with more than enough time to do all the reformation you want .
Let me make myself clear, i'm not trying to bait or taunt you in anyway, but i believe that achieving this was even more difficult to do than the previous two steps, the reason for that was due to the complete secrecy about what it looked like and who have it, it was kept a secret even from all the council members , most of the rumors i heard about it when i was in the Real World said that it was either with Diblosia king Devo or with the crown prince and daughter of the Demon Emperor, but whether was it in the hands of either Devo or the Demon Emperor children, the difficulty in acquiring it didn't decrease in the slightest .
It made it even more difficult, first of all both the two parties have strong strength and were given quite hefty sum of amulets by the Demon Emperor, also Blazan current whereabouts are unknown, Devo on the other hand were a monster race, so i don't know what consequences might be to attack him and not to mention that his father was even more powerful than the Demon Emperor .
Removing Devo out of the picture will open the gate of hell and if succeeded there was no guarantee that you would be able to gain anything from it because as said before the news about him having the container in his hands were nothing but mere rumors, if you failed to do so that would make the Demon Emperor more alarmed which might result in him speeding up the process of implementing his plan .
Those were all the options that i currently believe were available to you, if you still want to pick any of the latter mentioned method, i believe there was no need to answer your questions about the first one wont you say .
I looked at him deeply and said :
" You still hadn't given up on the Mind Nourishing Method, right ? .
He at my question raised both of his hand in the air above him as if surrendering and said :
You got me, i really hope for you to take the first plan, in hope of acquiring that Nourishing Method, but it isn't like you won't gain a lot from it as well, if things went smoothly, both of us will get what we desired .
I looked at him while raising an eyebrow at him, he flinched and began to become wary of where the attack will come from, but this time i didn't slap him as before, i was more engrossed in comprehending which of those 3 plans of action can be suitable to choose, which one of them can help me deal with the Demon invasion and the incoming crisis .
I discarded the third one due to the fact that the time at hand was quite short to begin with, so wasting any mor of it searching for that container might be quite futile .
So i was now contemplating on which path should be better to choose from the two left paths .
The first path could allow me to get in close range of demons, but it also carried a lot of danger in my opinion, unlike here when i will go to the Real World i won't be the strongest there, even if there were a few figures able get rid of me with quite ease, it was a bit deterring, but i had enough confidence that even if i met those figures, i would be able to put on a good fight .
Ludo wanted me to pick that path due to him wanting to take advantage of me achieving a high position in the family that could allow him to put his hands on the Mind Nourishing Method, he still lust for, but there were just too much to consider in that sort of plan .
The second path that i could take was actually in line with my thoughts, it would also allow me to take action instantly the moment that the Demon invasion start, if i guided the situation correctly, i might even be able to stop them from invading in the first place, but that was under the premise of being able to learn those Mana Techniques .
I was leaning towards the second path more than the first one, so i picked the second path much to the dismay of Ludo, but he suddenly gave me another two options, one was me waiting here for him to go and fetch enough Mana Stones, while also giving me some time to look at the Mana techniques he currently had in hands .
The second choice was me coming with him to the city of Devons, i wanted to pick the first after hearing from him that there were news about them capturing one of the heroes, completely unaware what this bad decision would bring me as a consequence .
He asked me to return back to my normal human form and in his hand there he was holding a cape, i wondered how will i turn back into my human form, but as if the order was given the moment i thought of it, i began to shrink back to my normal size, but this normal size apparently wasn't my normal size, i felt that the current body wasn't my body, seeing me like this, Ludo conjured a mirror using his Mana for me .
I weirdly looked at him but still looked into the mirror, what i saw had my blood become cold out of shock .
A complete different person than me appeard in the reflection of the Mirror, my body too looked like it completely had A Huge Make Over .