After the royal envoy bearing the order of ennoblement arrived, he went straight to Minair Manor to pay his respects to Torista.
He tactfully conveyed the invitation for Lei Mo to accompany them to the royal capital and attend the duke's ennoblement ceremony.
"Of course! I'm very interested in Clair, too."
Lei Mo said to Torista.
"Understood. I'll go and reply!"
Torista bowed, then gave Lei Mo a wistful look before turning to leave.
Those silver-gray eyes, her silver-white hair falling over her shoulders, her petite figure, her proud, high breasts, and her gaze brimming with waves.
"Ah! I can't take it—I can't take it!"
Lei Mo cried out inwardly, though his face showed no sign of being unable to take it. If anything, he seemed to be enjoying it.
Clair's royal capital, Tore City, lay southeast of Kemar City. Compared with the capital, Kemar City was closer to the Elf Forest.
Who knew what sort of luck the Minair family had stumbled upon to meet an Elf and even leave behind a descendant—Torista.
Otherwise, the chances of a woman being named heir were still very low. The Minair family's decline was another important factor; they needed Torista to revive the family.
Lei Mo's curiosity surged. Just how many half-elves were there in the Clair Kingdom?
Were the children of half-elves considered half-elves or humans?
Why had that fellow named Cole Minair been able to become a Druid, while the other seven couldn't? Was it because he had Elf blood?
He needed to go to Clair's royal capital to find answers to these questions. Otherwise, he'd never know.
And was this Clair Kingdom just like some island nation? Were they crossbreeding with other races? It was almost too similar!
What was different about Elf blood? What were full-blooded Elves really like, and what sort of talent did they have?
Last time, Clair had run off too quickly, and Lei Mo hadn't had a chance to ask. He figured Clair was afraid Lei Mo might casually kill him too.
A duke's investiture was a grand affair, and the kingdom needed to do a great deal of publicity. This time, they'd set the date three months away, mainly to promote the Minair family's ancient and illustrious history.
The Minair family's only remaining boast was its age. It was older than the Clair Kingdom itself, but that was all it had.
There was nothing else: no glorious family history, no great achievements, no powerful family members. Nothing.
Sometimes, having nothing worth boasting about was a kind of tragedy. At least the Minair family still had one thing.
And even if they truly had nothing, under certain circumstances, they could always fabricate something.
Over the past three months, Lei Mo had been helping Torista revise and improve her light-attribute battle aura.
That's right, Torista was already a Seventh-Level Warrior. Her old battle-aura manual was no longer good enough for her.
Lei Mo didn't have any light-attribute battle aura himself, so he used the Light Rune on Torista's back as a basis and created a new battle-aura manual around the characteristics of light elements.
Torista's new battle-aura manual had already begun to show results. It could help the family's warriors accumulate battle aura until they reached level seven.
This was good news for the weak Minair family. The other seven Rune Warriors had also broken through to level seven.
After breaking through, their progress slowed. Training battle aura and realizing one's potential took time.
Cole Minair still hadn't broken through. Druid training was still in the experimental stage, and its path was unclear. Lei Mo needed to refine it step by step.
For now, Druid training depended entirely on Lei Mo's wild ideas.
The different kinds of beast Essence Blood had given Lei Mo the idea of deriving a Druid's training method from the way magical beasts cultivated. Otherwise, Druids would just be accumulating battle aura, and their advantages would be wasted.
What were a Druid's advantages? Why, a body exactly like a magical beast's, with precisely the same talents. There were no Laws or Edicts restricting the refinement of Essence Blood; they could refine it from any beast of the same level.
That was terrifying. In theory, they could gain the talents of ten different Laws or Edicts.
Refining the Essence Blood of a magical beast of a certain element didn't necessarily mean gaining that element's talent, but at the very least, it gave them the key to the door—the ability to cast that element's magic.
Being able to absorb that element's Law energy meant gaining the qualification to comprehend its Law, even if the possibility was only theoretical.
But would any of that affect the Druid's defiant path? Not at all!
Someone with absolutely no talent for Wind, like Lei Mo, could refine the Essence Blood of a Divine Wind Bear and, after transforming into one, cast every kind of Wind magic, including forbidden spells.
Unfortunately, he hadn't gained any Thunder magic. Perhaps the Divine Wind Bear had acquired Thunder through refining a Magic Crystal Core, rather than being born with that talent.
In his Divine Wind Bear form, Lei Mo could theoretically comprehend the Law of Wind.
"Don't bite off more than you can chew. I'd better focus on comprehending Destruction!"
Lei Mo silently warned himself, lest he spread himself too thin.
Until he became a god of Destruction, Lei Mo didn't plan to comprehend any other Laws.
"Bill's talent for Wind is nothing special. He still hasn't sensed the fluctuations of the Law of Wind. His talent isn't even as good as mine!"
Lei Mo looked down on Bill's talent a little.
The ceremony to promote Torista to duke was half a month away. The Minair family's party was preparing to set out today.
Kemar City was thousands of kilometers from the capital, and the journey would take seven or eight days.
No one dared bother Lei Mo with trivial matters. He sat cross-legged on the Divine Wind Bear's back, quietly blending into the Minair family's procession.
Everyone looked at Lei Mo with yearning and hope. It was all because of those seven fellows.
The seven didn't go around showing off, but everyone had seen that within a few months, they'd all gone from Sixth-Level Warriors to Seventh-Level Warriors.
All of this had come from Lord Bailey—including the ducal title.
The Minair family members wished they could get down on their knees and lick Lei Mo's boots, just for the chance to have the same fortune as those seven. They still didn't know about Cole's transformation.
The odds of an ordinary human becoming a Druid were exceedingly low. Cole's ancestors had had Elf blood somewhere countless generations ago.
By Cole's generation, that blood had partially resurfaced, allowing him to become a Druid.
Lei Mo was filled with the desire to study Elves and half-elves.
If Clair was willing, Lei Mo wouldn't mind helping him become a Saint Realm Druid.
The scenery along the way was beautiful. Unlike the Keaton Kingdom, the Clair Kingdom had been deeply influenced by the Elves.
Its overall aesthetic was rooted in nature, letting Lei Mo take in vistas as lovely as an immortal paradise.
During the months in Kemar City, Lei Mo had looked into the matter.
It wasn't just the Clair Kingdom that revered Elf blood, admired Elf aesthetics, and embraced everything connected to Elves. Dozens of kingdoms and principalities bordering the Elf Forest did the same.
"Maybe it's just the instinct to admire the strong. It's the same here as it is on Earth!"
Lei Mo summed it up in his mind. Back then, Huaxia had been number one in the world, so everything about it had been good and right. But later... sigh!
Putting those thoughts aside, Lei Mo's consciousness sank into Franklin's Soul Space.
He focused on the Destruction Rune that Franklin projected into it, leaving the task of guarding his body to Franklin and Bill.
In the gray, hazy space, countless Destruction Runes were intertwined and interwoven.
It was impossible to tell where one began or ended. The Edict fluctuations on them were clear and orderly.
Lei Mo's nebula-like soul analyzed and calculated those fluctuations, then compared them one by one with the intricate Destruction Runes, tangled and interwoven together. His comprehension was progressing very well.
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