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Nothing was left to say or do. The verdict was clear... Ashton had to leave the planet and the trials behind just because he wasn\'t strong enough to stand his ground at the moment. The first monarch might not have stated his reasons behind imposing restrictions on him, but Ashton had a clear idea.

\'The bastard is scared of me.\' He thought, \'I would be too if I was in his shoes. He had seen my growth and likely wants to put a stop to it while he has the chance.\'

[I agree... either way, we don\'t have much choice in the matter.]

Ashton clenched his fists. If only he could have attempted a couple more trials, he could have been strong enough to shut that bastard up for good and not stand there... defeated. That\'s right, he was defeated. Even though he got rid of his enemies, he still lost the battle.

[Oi, don\'t think about doing something rash to protect your ego.]

"Don\'t worry. I\'m not that shallow-minded. Not anymore at least." Ashton sighed, "First let\'s get away from here, then we\'ll have a lot to talk about. Especially that Michael guy."

[You said his name wasn\'t Michael though?]

"Yeah... Detection said he was called Gabriel. That\'s why I want to know more about this Michael guy and try connecting the dots if possible."

"Maybe I can be of some help in that regard..." Otiga replied as Ashton walked back to where they were.

Ashton cancelled his transformation and returned to his more human-like appearance, before asking her what did she mean.

"Follow me into the basement, please. That place might have the answers to your questions." Otiga said, got up and left without even sparing a gaze at Leon who was shaking in fear.

However, Ashton wasn\'t so merciful. If he was going to be thrown out of the planet, he might as well get rid of some trash on his way out.

"Atlas, you know what to do," Ashton mumbled before lifting Anna in his arms and following Otiga into her mansion.

A moment later, they heard Leon\'s painful cries. Ashton did not know nor cared what happened to him. He was fine as long as the bastard was dead. Anna looked at his indifferent expression and caressed his face. Even though it wasn\'t her fault, she still blamed herself for what happened.

Ashton didn\'t say a word, but smiled and kissed her hand as she pulled away. The incident might have been his worst nightmare, but thanks to it, he got to learn a lot about his limits. Back when he evolved for a second time, he couldn\'t help but think he was invincible.

But Gabriel or whoever the guy was, quickly put his ass straight in line. In a way, he was thankful to him, even though he swore he would return him the favour when the time came. For now, he had to lay low and gather information. Hopefully, one day he would be back and complete the trials.

Once Leon\'s cries died down. Otiga finally broke down. She knew Ashton had done something she would have never been able to do. After all, despite what Leon had done, he was still someone close to her. However, that pity party episode ended when she got back inside and saw the mangled corpses of her loyal guards.

Leon\'s selfishness had taken their lives and that somehow got her to have peace with Leon\'s rightful execution. Once in the hall, Otiga walked up to an abnormally large portrait of a female alien who resembled Otiga. She then did something to it and a blade appeared in her hands.

She then proceeded to slice the tip of her finger and pressed it on the portrait. A blinding light greeted them as the portrait faded away as if it was a mirage. Behind the portrait was an illuminated path with seemingly no end to it.

"This is the library our family has preserved for centuries. It has the knowledge of everything that ever happened on the planet while we were here." She mumbled as they headed inside.

After a while, she continued, "The hunger for knowledge and intel in the Zhasks is so out of control, most of the heads did not even bother maintaining order and recorded even non-consequential things in here. I think if there\'s any place you\'d find anything about the first monarch, it has to be here."

"Since you\'re a monarch considered to be quite close to him, I thought you\'d know more about him?"

Ashton\'s question made Otiga laugh. At that moment, he had a feeling she might not be as close to the monarch as he thought her to be. Her words only confirmed his suspicion.

"We\'re close? I don\'t even know how he looks. You should take a hint from that fact alone. He values me, or more like valued me, but not to the level he would protect me from his peers. Especially Darjud who happened to be his close friend since they had the same master."

She scoffed and continued, "I don\'t think anyone, other than Darjud even knows the first monarch\'s real name. That\'s the kind of mysterious person he is. To be honest, it\'s a surprise he let you live after what you did to Darjud."

\'Surprise, my ass.\' Ashton thought, \'When he kicked me, he had full intention of killing me. He simply changed his mind since I didn\'t die.\'

[Or as I would like to phrase it, he did not want to kill a cockroach.]

\'You are a part of the cockroach, so mind your tone.\'

[I\'m just stating the facts. Also, don\'t waste time hanging around here, get the information and get out of here. That fucker\'s mood swing could kick in at any moment and he\'d decide to kill you.]

Ashton didn\'t disagree and they quickly made their way through the corridors. When Otiga said it was a library, Ashton expected it to have long pathways created by bookshelves. But to his surprise, the long hall led to a fairly small room.

The room was surprisingly empty and only had what appeared to be a water basin in the middle. The shiny liquid inside the basin lit up the room with light that came out of it.

"Here we are," Otiga announced while pointing at the basin, "the Well of Knowledge, the place that holds all of the knowledge Zhasks have acquired through generations."

Although it was called a well, it would have made more sense if it was called the circle of knowledge, given its weirdly two-dimensional appearance. There was nothing attached to the thin plate as it floated in the air of its own free will.

[It\'s a basic technological storage unit. The Xyrans used to have a lot of these floating around. One disc can contain up to ten thousand yottabytes worth of memory... so yeah, the shortage of storage was the reason we stopped using these.]

\'I did not understand a single thing that came out of your mouth, but I\'ll take your word for it.\'

Otiga slowly headed towards the well, gesturing for Ashton to follow her. Ashton carefully let Anna down, who was weak but fine otherwise before following Otiga.

"What do I do next?"

"Dip your head in and concentrate on what you want to know. If the well has an answer, it would respond, if it doesn\'t well, then we\'ll have to look into finding other ways to get the information." Otiga replied.

[Dip your head into a dish full of suspicious liquid. Yup, that\'s definitely not suspicious at all.]

Otiga noticed Ashton hesitate for a moment and although she had not expected him to get wary of her, it made sense he was being cautious. After all, it was a member of her family that tried to destroy him and his companion.

"Looks like you do trust me all that much. It\'s understandable." Otiga smiled and went ahead to demonstrate how it worked.

After that, it was silent for a couple of minutes, before she pulled her head out. However, she was visibly shaken. Whatever she saw inside had scared her... a lot. After taking a few quick breaths, she finally composed herself enough to start talking.

"I can\'t believe this... The first monarch isn\'t anything we thought him to be." She panted, "He is mortal, but immortal at the same time. Every single patriarch of the Zhasks has his memory engraved within themselves. All of my ancestors knew him, just like I do. It\'s almost as if he has been on Euphoria, since the moment it was created."

Otiga kept rambling on and on about how a lot of other things made sense now and whatnot. But Ashton was no longer paying attention to her words. Thanks to [Heartbeat sense], he knew what Otiga said was true and the thing Astaroth told him a moment later only confirmed it was possible.

[Michael was always a master of [Cell Division]. A skill that was considered to be a myth by the galactic species and we thought the xyrans only had the knowledge... that is until Michael showed up with it.]

\'Please speak in words that I understand...\'

[The gist of it is, as long as the cells among your body keep dividing amongst themselves, and new cells keep emerging, you can basically be immortal. How do you think the Xyrans or the Precursors lived for thousands of years? We keep dividing our cells and generating new ones.]

[But even that has limitations. If we keep dividing the cells, soon enough they\'ll turn into cancerous cells and the skill that kept us alive would eventually lead to a painful death.]

\'Okay, but what does that... oh shit...\' Ashton realised what Astaroth had been wanting to say till now, \'Michael is Gabriel?\'

[My guess is, that Michael must have managed to get past this limitation and did not want to share the secret with the others. So he staged his death, tricked [Detection] into mentioning him as a new person and has been living on Euphoria in secret ever since. Everything makes sense now... even the fact he is stronger than Beelzebub and even me for that matter.]

Astaroth had a sense of urgency in his voice, but Ashton was only thinking one thing, \'It took that fucker multiple lifetimes to get to level 180+? How pathetic did he have to be to level up so slowly?\'