"What about the Ashborn Family? What's your relationship with them? And why were you pretending to be their founder? And was…"

…was the First Successor somehow related to the Ashborns…?"

Rael asked the question he was most curious about, his domain completely calm as Ra was seated on a small floating chair beside Rael.

Naga looked at Rael, his eyes heavy now.

"No, my master. The first successor was not related to the founder of the Ashborn family. In fact, they didn't even exist in the same time period."

He continued.

"It happened after a few centuries. My siblings, the ones who were saved by the first successor once, forgot his existence as well and scattered across the different worlds after the end of the Lost Century. But I stayed in this world, at the same spot where my master used to tell me stories."

He raised his gaze to look at the open ceiling of the Trickster Domain.

"I couldn't accept the fact that my master, like every other person involved in that catastrophe, had ceased to exist, even if everyone else forgot about him. So, I waited for him patiently."

Rael didn't say a word and listened to Naga's story calmly.

"I coiled around a massive Redwood Tree and provided protection to the nearby villagers but then, he appeared, Romen Von Ashborn or as he was called back then, the Heavenly Demon."

'Heavenly Demon, huh…?'

Rael nodded, noting the name in his mind as Naga continued.

"Back then, there wasn't any human empire, there wasn't even a division of territory among the races that existed at the time. And in that era, Romen ran a cult of his own, calling himself a God, trying to gather faith in order to ascend to Divinity one day using it."

'So, people back then knew ways to ascend, huh?'

Rael analyzed it calmly.

"He called it the Heavenly Demon Sect. He was a merciless ruler who hoped to conquer everything in his sight and then one day, his eyes fell upon the village I protected."

Naga's face twisted as if he could still remember the day it all happened.

"The village, unlike others, had something that Romen coveted, a way to ascend without relying on the power of faith."

"A seed of divinity."

As soon as he said those words, Rael's eyes widened.

'So, the Seed of Divinity really is an alternative way to ascend to Godhood?'

He himself had awakened one back in the Forest of Unmasked when he claimed his Card of Arcana. So, he was even more curious about it but he held himself back from asking any more questions just yet and waited for Naga to finish his story.

"That seed was something left by my master, in the hope that one day his next successor would be born in that village and claim it."

Naga's crimson eyes stared into Rael's. 𝕗𝐫𝐞𝕖𝕨𝐞𝗯𝚗𝕠𝘃𝐞𝚕.𝐜𝗼𝚖

"But somehow, Romen, consumed by greed, learned about the existence of the seed and attacked. He was a mere demi-god, just like me and yet he used strange powers to overpower me."

"He didn't just claim the Seed of Divinity, he also slaughtered most of the villagers, leaving a few females for his entertainment. He sealed my soul inside a ring as proof of his superiority and passed it down through the family he created solely for the purpose of controlling the world from behind the scenes."

"The place where the Ashborn Estate exists now is the same place where the village once stood, while the location of the Ashborn treasury was where the main sect of the Heavenly Demon once resided."

"What happened to him afterwards…?"

Rael couldn't help but ask, trying to take in as much information as he could.

"He used the power of the Seed of Divinity to ascend to Godhood, taking most of his family with him and leaving behind an illegitimate son he had with one of the villagers to manage the Heavenly Demon Sect or as he later renamed it, the Ashborn family."

Naga let out a slow, mocking smile.

"You might not even know this, but he selects one person from the family as his apostle every generation. Once they grow strong enough, he calls them to his divine realm and appoints a new apostle. After all, with his talents, that's the best way he can grow stronger."

"Without the Seed of Divinity, he could have never climbed the ladder of ascension. So, in a way… he stole a fate that was meant to be yours."

"Hmm, I see."

Rael didn't react much to the part about his fate being stolen and simply nodded, his mind racing, trying to comprehend the information, which was, to be honest, too much for him but thankfully, his Moon Card made it easier to process and digest.

"Do you know who the apostle this generation is…?"

That was the first question he asked, as he wanted to understand how deeply this so-called Heavenly Demon was embedded within the family and whether he had any useful information about him.

"Even I do not know that, Master. But what I do know is that it is not Lyra or your father as I have spent a long time around them without noticing anything of that sort." Naga replied almost immediately.

"I see." Rael nodded once again. "What about the Imperial Family? If Romen was so strong, why did he submit to the Altharia Family?"

"Rather than submitting, I believe they established the Empire together, as the founder of the Altharia family ascended at the same time as Romen. But gradually, the Ashborn family's strength declined, and they became subordinate to Altharia despite once being equals."

Naga explained everything calmly.

But Rael wasn't done yet, because these were barely surface-level questions. In his mind, he had already prepared far more important ones to ask.

And for that, he couldn't find a more perfect place than this.

After all, time was distorted within his domain according to his will. It was another useful power he had awakened after ranking up.

Though the distortion wasn't significant, it was enough for him to extract all the information he needed before Lyra or anyone else grew impatient with him being unconscious for too long.

"What do you know about the seed of divinity?" He asked the question he felt most curious about. "And what are the ways to ascend to divinity?"