Chapter 2002: Who?

Leonel's gaze was exceptionally bright at this moment.

He felt that things had fallen in line, but this still opened up questions for who it could possibly be, and more importantly, why.

Leonel didn't feel that Auran was likely to be a person who acted without cause. In fact, all of his actions seemed to point toward the fact that he was very much prepared for all of this.

Those several broken city cores should be his attempts at testing several hypotheses for sneaking into cities without detection. After all, given the territory maps, Leonel could monitor everything in his territory with great ease, that was why he was so comfortable leaving it behind.

Then there was his information network. He might have already used several kill exchanges to spread them out across the two supercontinents. That was how he knew exactly where Leonel was despite the fact Leonel had a decoy city still sitting in the middle of the continent, and he likely knew exactly where his target Heir was as well.

In fact, this final probe of Leonel before he set off was just a final check to ensure that everything was in line and working perfectly, killing two birds with one stone.

This person was meticulous, intelligent, and most importantly, patient. He hadn't even made a move until almost a week had passed in the Heir Wars, and he was still carefully planning even now. Ironically, due to his true demon blood, Auran was even calmer than most Morales as the Lineage Factor did affect his mind as much as it did the others.

On top of that, he was young, comparatively speaking. Meaning, the Morales Lineage Factor had yet to impact him nearly as greatly as it did the other Morales Ancestors.

What was most convincing to Leonel was that just now, he had gotten the final hit in on Auran, and yet the latter didn't feel the need to prove a point. Leonel knew Auran was holding back and could have made him suffer a loss before leaving, but he hadn't.

This wasn't a rash person who couldn't control his own ego.

Like this, even without understanding the underlying story, Leonel already believed Auran. But the question was... who was Auran targeting?

Leonel's thoughts flickered, his mind settling on one person...

Fourth Nova.

Leonel deduced that Fourth Nova had the highest odds of being the person Auran was targeting. Back then, Leonel had thought that Fourth Nova wanted to sign Aina to a slave contract just because he thought she was a beauty, but what if it was more than that?

Just a few weeks prior to that, hadn't the Three Finger Cult appeared in an attempt to snatch Aina away due to her Blood Sovereignty? What if this was Fourth Nova's goal all along?

Leonel's thoughts flowed incredibly smoothly and he felt his mind making connections that he had never made before. He immediately decided who was the most likely to be Auran's target based on his own biases.

'The second most likely... Third Nova.'

Leonel's gaze flickered with a cold light.

Third Nova had some ties with the Suiard family and had even aided in the collapse of the Stalwart Polearm Faction back then. These were records that Leonel only learned about after reading through the trascriptions of the Void Senate gatherings.

Of course, this wasn't immediately obvious through the senate filings, but who was Leonel and how good was his deduction skills? Even if the Suiard family and the Unfettered Blade Party never admitted it, he didn't need their admission.

That timing was also suspicious, because it was also during that time that there was a change to the original True Selection and the geniuses of the Cataclysm Generation were shipped off to the Rapax Nest.

This wasn't in any Senate documents as it was a unilateral decision, but this was even easier for Leonel to deduce for one specific reason: his father.

Why would his father take Rosen Suiard's arm if the Suiard family was not related to this?

This seemed to paint the picture that Third Nova was in bed with the Suiard family, and may have even used this to intentionally target Leonel.

Leonel didn't have enough evidence to further connect this to the Three Finger Cult as the Suiard family didn't seem to have any relations to them. If they had, Leonel believed his father would have taken Rosen's head, not his arm.

Leonel had quite a lot of belief in his father, that much was obvious. But anyone who had seen the rage in Velasco's eyes when he spoke of the Three Finger Cult and the things they had done to his father and Leonel's grandfather would likewise understand.

It was because of this that Leonel placed Third Nova a step beneath Fourth Nova.

A Morales Heir with ties to the Three Finger Cult versus a Morales Heir that was a puppet of the Suiard family. Both were absolutely terrible, but one was still clearly worse than the other.

Of course, this also made the assumption that Auran knew of the Three Finger Cult and could even find their tail in this fashion. But Leonel didn't feel that this was a great leap at all.

Leonel had deduced long ago that it seemed that the Three Finger Cult, the Silver Empire and the Morales family had an odd line connecting them all.

Why were the Lineage Factors of the Silver Empire and Morales family so similar? Why were the both seemingly related to demons? Why was it that of all the Ancestors that the Three Finger Cult could have targeted to kill, they would choose his grandfather? He hadn't found any information of the Three Finger Cult being so bold with anyone else.

Then there was the most obvious thing... Auran had demon blood and seemed to be mixed in the middle of all of this. If there was any Morales Heir aware of the Three Finger Cult and maybe understood some of these underlying secrets, would it be him?