Whether the mother and daughter would be able to use the opportunity was up to them.

And evidently, Helena had no intentions of disappointing her.

Each and every one of the 20 people outside the house and even more who came a while later were received cordially and spoken to with an honest smile which made them feel at ease.

There was one thing which made almost all the customers like her: she had one base price which she stuck to, even if she was offered more.

Such steadfastness without getting greedy which was required at this early stage in business only showed that this was an establishment which definitely had the potential to rise in Angaria.

It was only at the end of the night that Helena finally closed the door for the last time before being hugged by Dalia who came running towards her.

"Mom! I can't believe it! So many orders! How will we will complete them all?"

This was a question which was also on Helena's mind, but she had put it aside when accepting the orders because she had known that this was a once-in-lifetime opportunity.

"I don't know. But we will find a way. The King did his part in helping our business. Now, it is time to do ours. We going to be very busy, Dalia. But let's just work hard and we can have everything we ever wanted. Remember the dreams you had as a little child to live in a large house and help as many kids as you can by giving them food and shelter? Maybe we will even be able to do that!"

Hearing this, Dalia's eyes shone as she thought about the dreams and wishes she had had back in the village when she was still naïve about the world.

Although they were one of the poorest families in the village, there had still been some who didn't even have food to eat and traveled from village to village looking for work. Due to her own lonely childhood, Dalia had wanted to help such families and their kids in any way she could.

Yet, after growing up and understanding their financial situation, she had given up on such grandiose stuff and had replaced it with a singular dream of serving the King who had done so much for the family while also taking care of her Mother.

Now that she heard that both could be possible, hope and happiness filled her which made her smile and hug her mother even tighter.

For this family's business, the essentials were in place, and all that was needed was proper execution.

…

Grumbling to himself, Elanev gingerly sat down on the sofa in his room before wis.h.i.+ng that he hadn't said yes when the king had asked to spar with him.

It seemed as if the man had been penting up frustration, anger and the desire for battle for decades, as each spar almost devolved into a fight to the death which generally left Elanev bruised because of his weaker body.

Of course, the flip-side to this was that he was getting closer and closer to the King, who was letting down his guard more and more.

At the same time, Elanev had also set into motion a few plans to infiltrate the Palace further.

Daneel had specially sent over monitoring devices which could be discreetly placed at locations to surveil the Palace, but he hadn't found a location yet where they could be placed.

The best option was obviously the Throne Room, but this was one of the most heavily guarded in the entire Palace.

Hence, the only opportunity he could use was if he were called again by the King for some reason. Sadly, it did not seem like this would happen any time soon.

Besides, Daneel had been slightly afraid that the unknown capabilities of the old man might include being able to scan whether there were any such devices in his vicinity constantly.

Hence, since finding out that the old man was the true perpetrator, Elanev had been ordered to switch off the audio and video relaying trinket in case the old man was there.

After all, such devices worked by transferring information in the form of a complex array of elementary particles.

The complexity of this array and the difficulty in detecting it decided the cost of this trinket. As something which was being used for such an important project, the one Elanev had been given was the most top-notch that Daneel had produced based on the designs he had developed using the system.

Only those at the peak Warrior Level would be able to detect it from a close distance if the information was being transmitted to a different location.

Hence, the trinkets that were to be placed in the Palace were a different type: instead of relaying information live, they stored them. Elanev would later have to manually remove them and transmit the information to Lanthanor to be a.n.a.lyzed.

Although this method was a bit redundant, even Champion level individuals wouldn't be able to spot it.

In a way, this was akin to computer viruses on Earth where only sufficiently advanced programs would be able to detect and get rid of them.

Touching a spot near his bosom to make sure that the pouch which held those trinkets was still there, Elanev started to think about how he could make the King invite him again so he could place the trinket.

As for his other a.s.signment of obtaining one of the trinkets which was used to connect a citizen with a Black Raven, he had no idea where to even start.

...

Meanwhile, in the Lanthanorian Kingdom, 2 women were standing in front of the "School of Lanthanor" and wondering whose harebrained idea it was to set up such a money-losing and useless initiative.