Chapter 261 - Miriel

Linking herself through a second channel that she created, she filtered through all of the useless information.

'Found it.' She thought with a smile.

In the royal family, excluding Lyrica, there are 4 princes and 2 princesses. The princes are gunning for the throne while the princesses are trying to get help from outside powers. There had been more princes in the past but they had been eliminated one after the other. Leaving them with the current line up.

Blythe was the current third prince and his power was in the middle. According to what she could find, it was rumoured that the highest level person in his faction was a powerhouse nearing the stage of Tier 5. However, that was just a rumour.

The 'first' prince, Neldor Valenstaine, has the most power among all the princes. He's being openly supported by the Rising Sun faction along with several high level powerhouses near the peak of tier 4.

Following behind the first prince was the second Prince, Elashor. While he doesn't have as many high level powerhouses like Neldor, Elashor has the back up of several high tier factions along with the top tier faction, God's Pantheon who is a direct contender against the Rising Sun faction.

The fourth prince, Lefyr Valenstaine, was definitely the weakest out of them all since he has no support whatsoever. However, he was the favourite candidate of the citizens since he focuses on the people rather than the power.

Publicly stating that he doesn't need to be king to help the people, he would rather not fight against his brothers despite not being born from the same mother.

There are several nobles who wish that Lefyr would take up the role as king but could only watch in pity.

As for the princesses, they were receiving training by the church so that they could take up the role of being the next saintess. Regardless of who takes the throne, they will support them after they ascend.

'With this being the case, the most dangerous is definitely the first and second brother. Blythe can be set aside for now since his support is still lacking. There's also the variable called the elders. For the ascension to have been delayed for so long, they must hold a considerable amount of power as well. They'll be the biggest obstacle since there is no information regarding their levels or support. Only names.' Shiro frowned.

There are a total of five elders of unknown strengths and have not expressed which side they're on. They were currently taking the passive approach of just watching what was happening.

'Hmm… once we're in the Miriel, we will definitely have run ins with two top tier factions. Main objective is to keep Lyrica safe and try to separate her from the royal family if we could. Not only that, but we'll also need to make sure that we don't piss off anyone from the top tier factions. That being said, we also need to take the initiative.'

Leaning back slightly, Shiro frowned and thought deeply about what she can and can't do in Miriel. She had to find the right balance so that they could get the best outcome.

'If I use the life fire or rather, the Essence Flame, I may be able to get an upper ground in terms of negotiation. But as Lyrica has stated before, I need to be careful or else I'll make the entire elven race my enemy.'

Massaging her eyes, she decided to take a bath now.

"Girls, let's go have a bath now." Shiro called out.

"I'm ready!" Lyrica stopped her practice instantly.

Smiling wearily, Shiro looked towards the other girls and saw that they were ready as well.

Walking over to the wall mounted tablet, Shiro checked where the bathroom was and found it rather quickly.

The first thing she did when she entered the bathroom was to make sure that they weren't being monitored at all.

Once she was sure that they were in total privacy, she sighed in relief and added a few formations to keep things extra safe.

Setting up the bath, Shiro stretched her body and undressed. While this was happening, Lyrica stood in a trance and even needed Madison to knock on her head in order to snap her out of it.

'Nimue, how does it work exactly?' Shiro asked while ignoring the girls behind her.

{Don't worry about it my queen. You just need to take a bath as usual and I'll do the rest.} Nimue replied almost immediately.

'Alright.'

Dipping her foot in the bath, she saw that a layer of fog seemed to form over the top and realized that it was condensed mana.

"Haa….." Sighing out in relief, Shiro relaxed her body.

While she was relaxing, Lyrica cursed the fact that there was now a layer of fog so that she couldn't see anything.

###

For the next few days, Shiro focused on doing research along with helping the girls train. She made sure that she researched the prince's skill sets and any martial arts so that she could be ready for when they fight. Not only that, she also made sure to check on how much manpower each faction had placed on Miriel.

Since Japan was neighbours with the elven continent, the Rising Sun had placed quite a lot of importance on the country.

God's Panteon, however, only assigned a few branch masters to support the prince. It didn't matter to them if the country was theirs or not since they were located quite far from the country. But if the Rising Sun faction thought that they were going to give a country without a fight, they were dead wrong.

In addition to this, Shiro found out about the average level in the country. Most of the adventurers were nearing level 80 to 100 while the higher ups were 100+.

The first prince Neldor was a level 110 Ascended Sword Emperor that excelled in attack power but lacked spells.

Second prince Elashor was a level 100 Mystic Warlock. Having a class that focused on spell dominance, his physical prowess was rather weak. But with his myriad of spells and long ranged attacks that would lock onto you, it was a difficult task to get close.

She also did some research about Blythe's Domain Master class. It was one that she had some idea of but wasn't too sure about the details. It turns out that the class focused on status effects along with area dominance. His spells could decrease your stats and increase his own.

But that wasn't it. He could also put a silencing domain where spells would be negated/ this was extremely troubling for the second prince but was nothing in front of the first prince.

However, the Domain Master was similar to the Nanomancer in terms of diversity. That was because he also had a counter for the first prince.

With the third prince being a counter for both princes, once he decides to work with either one of them, the balance would be tipped and it would become a full on slaughter.

The only reason as to why the two princes haven't killed the third prince to get rid of this problem was because of the fact that the fourth prince may intervene and stop the fight. Once that happened, the third prince could easily find the time to ambush them.

With the balance being so delicate, any moves could possibly trigger a domino effect.

But despite finding out quite a bit regarding the country's state of power and influences inside the country, Shiro couldn't find anything to do with Lyrica being called back. Even with her nanobots constantly eavesdropping on Blythe and his four guards, she hadn't heard anything useful regarding this.

The lack of information from the web could be explained as the royal family not wanting to let this leak, but the fact that Bltyhe had said nothing about this was strange. Of course, it could just be that he didn't need to say anything about it. If that was the case, then she was just unlucky.

But if it wasn't, it meant that the princes might not know why Lyrica was needed back at the royal family.

With so many unknown variables spread out like this, she needed to make sure that every move was one that was done after some consideration. She could try making a plan right now but it may be rendered useless once she gets new information.

The best thing that Shiro could do was to just sit tight and adapt to the situation.

*Knock knock knock

Hearing a knock, Shiro walked over to the door and opened it.

"We've arrived at the elven capital, Miriel." Blythe said with a smile.