On the throne in the air in the middle of Angaria, Daneel sat all by his lonely self while an object slowly rotated in front of him.

It was in the shape of the continent, but the edges were smoothed.

Listening to this summary of the Grand Inheritance that he had asked the system to repeat, he got the idle thought that from certain angles, the continent almost looked like the skull of some ancient being which had lied down in the sea and died, leaving behind its bones for them to be born on.

Alas, the shape was incorrect now.

Of course, the loss of Axelor was the reason behind this. But as the object had been fas.h.i.+oned by the Emperor out of the need for it to be symbolic, there was no reason for him to change it, so he let it be.

Just like he had done in the last few hours, he checked on the man once again as soon as a thought came in his mind regarding him.

He was still meditating, but Daneel was quickly losing his patience. He didn't know for certain how long he could wait until he was forced to interrupt the man and carry out the two tests, but telling himself that if the tests went well, then it would mean that he was disrespecting his very own master whose efforts had been indispensable in him reaching his current stage, he controlled himself and turned his attention to the Grand Inheritance again.

Obtaining the parts had been easy – some of them had been with him, while the others had been languis.h.i.+ng in the vaults of the Order, which were now open to him. On bringing together all the parts, there had been no explosive reaction, as one would expect from such a famous weapon if they were familiar with the stories on Earth. Instead, like a puzzle coming together, it had merged into one object which Daneel had not touched until now, as he was afraid of being tempted by the power that it surely contained.

It was this object that the Emperor had wanted hidden from his descendants. He had gone to so much effort to keep the individual parts apart from each other, and now that it was in front of him, whole, Daneel had almost convinced himself to just try it out for a moment.

Thankfully, he had resisted the urge, and on reflecting back on the feeling that had almost taken control of him, he was reminded of a very famous fictional object in a trilogy back on Earth.

For the past few hours, the system had been running simulations regarding whether the usage of the Grand Inheritance might be able to bring about the tipping in the scales that was required for them to survive. It had carefully recorded all of the data put forward by Husare, so it was capable of using her expertise, now, too, to guess the fate of the continent.

A single strike. At a crucial point in the war, that was all the Emperor had used it for, and it had been enough to turn the very tide of the battle. He had struck at that being which had had no option but to flee, and in doing so, he had won the war, but doomed the continent.

The strike had been strategically sent forth in a way that it destroyed many of the main forces of the invading beings on its way to their leader, and if the records were to be believed, it had been so fast that even such a powerful ent.i.ty of the Mainland had been unable to avoid it.

If the worst came to the worst, would he have to do so, too?

The troubling thing was that his actions would actually set them up for an Apocalypse even worse than that which had engulfed the continent the last time.

Then, only those who were at least at the Champion level had been the ones that turned into monsters. Now, because he had taken the step to combine thousands of people into squads that could contend with Champions and Heroes, they, too, would be affected, so if a second Apocalypse happened, there would be no coming back from it.

The last time, Angaria had only survived because many people had been able to escape and hide themselves long enough for the monsters to tear each other apart. Now, if only the elderly and the children were left, the chances of survival were way too slim.

He needed something else. He had known this even before he began studying the Grand Inheritance, but with the knowledge that it would be foolish to ignore it, he had gone ahead, despite being aware of all of this danger that had kept him away from the object until now.

Indeed, he had asked the system to study it in those hours that he had spent developing weapons to take with him to the a.s.sault over the eye.

Reminded of the battle, Daneel wondered whether the loss of the eye was truly as significant as the a.s.sa.s.sins had made it out to be. If that was true, would the Church field even more troops out of anger, or would there be fewer Heroes to kill, as the overall budget of the war might be affected?

He didn't know, and he hated it. Not for the first time, he lamented the fact that he no longer had an insider in the Church.