Chapter 74: Ch 74: The Influential Family's Powers
One of the main reasons why they were able to last so long was because they had never been too ostentatious. For that reason, the outside world knew very little about them.
The place where they lived was in the middle of nowhere and their extremely large house was surrounded by several high performance barriers.
Due to the effect of one such barrier, a person without having the strength of at least a Platinum rank would not be able to even see the house. So it was a kind of initial test to judge if one was qualified to enter their property or not.
They were also known for showing great hospitality to any one above the strength of Mithril and sometimes offered high paying jobs to them other than the flower blooming job. So, their reputation among the powerhouses was also quite high.
For that reason, the chance of Lauren facing any kind of danger here was actually low. But still Rein was a worrywart for his wives and he always took extra precautions.
...
All five of them were walking in an area that looked somewhat between a forest and a grassland. Very soon all of them were able to see a large mansion up front. This mansion was 8 stories high and was also quite wide at the same time. It was one of the biggest structures Lauren had ever seen.
If she had not seen the royal castle of the Xetremelia Empire then it would have been the largest structure she had ever seen.
Even for Rein, Stella and Tasha who had seen many gigantic things, this was still a very impressive mansion. Rein had seen a few other hidden ancient families like this, but among them this family had to be one of the better ones.
The barrier surrounding the house did not pose any problem for them and all of them were able to cross it easily. This house was surrounded by a 15 meter tall wall and the gate was also just as big. In front of the gate, a mechanical structure was keeping watch.
It was a giant armour-like puppet made using a black ore.
Rein did not know the name of the ore but his Eye of Truth judged this ore to be of quite a high quality. Stella identified this ore to be called "Mandine" and it was a rare ore that could only be found in Nodvec continent. So it was extremely rare to see it in the central Ingrisia continent.
This puppet was capable of speech and asked the group for their purpose of coming here. It also informed them that a servant of this family was coming here to welcome them.
Even if a person came here just because of curiosity, even then this family would welcome them. And if they had some kind of job that they wanted them to do, this family would make that person an offer. So the question about purpose was just to clarify things.
Lauren told the puppet that she was here to take on the challenge of blooming the Rashaminthiam flower. This was a happy news and the puppet immediately informed the servant coming here about it. Then they waited for a few minutes for the servant to come while talking with the puppet.
The servant who came out had dark brown hair and a chocolate coloured skin. He was wearing a butler\'s outfit and was quite handsome. He was also standing with a good posture for fighting so it was evident that he was not unfamiliar with combat.
He gave a picture perfect bow to everyone and welcomed them inside the mansion. Rein and his group bid farewell to the puppet and went inside following the butler who introduced himself as Rufus.
The inside of the mansion was just as impressive as the outside. There was a garden surrounding the main house and this garden was very well taken care of. Beautiful flowers were blooming on all sides and various kinds of exotic animals were also roaming around this garden.
Seeing that everyone was quite impressed by the garden and were looking at it with interest, he asked them he they wanted to have the meeting inside the mansion or in a part of the garden. To that question, Rein immediately answered the garden as all his lovers were liking this garden quite a lot.
So, they were taken to a gazebo located close to a pond and they were served tea and snacks. After waiting for about five minutes or so, a lady wearing a gorgeous red dress appeared. She had a refined temperament and a perfect smile on her face.
But her whole demeanour changed when her eyes fell on Rein who was the most handsome person she had ever seen. But that lady was able to use her solid willpower to resist the temptation to keep on looking at Rein\'s face and introduce herself.
"Hello everyone, I\'m Maria Luna Okniser, a member of the Okniser family. I was given the responsibility of guiding all of you for the duration of your stay here and feel free to ask me anything if you face any kind of problem."
Rein and his party then started to introduce themselves. Rein mentioned his identity as a mithril rank adventurer and Lauren did the same. As Tasha, Kagura and Stella were not officially mithril rankers so they did not mention their rank and just introduced themselves as Rein\'s girlfriends.
After the introductions was over, Maria started to ask them various questions. Normally it should have been Lauren answering them as she was the one who had a purpose for coming here.
But Maria was unable to hold back her infatuation for Rein anymore so all the questions she asked were addressed to Rein and not Lauren.
As Rein already knew what answers Lauren was going to give, he gave all the answers in Lauren\'s place and very soon Maria was ready to take them to the place where the plant was kept.
As Rein was talking with Maria, Stella was using her Eye of Clairvoyance to check the whole building out. She was using her newly gained mind acceleration skill to perfectly map out the whole place in a very short amount of time.
This building actually had quite a few countermeasures for these types of things. But Stella\'s ability was just way too overpowered and she was able to bypass them.
But still even she would not be able to hide her proving from these security measures for too long, so she was happy with her mind acceleration coming in handy.
While walking behind Maria, Rein heard everything that Stella found out with her search. The most interesting thing that she heard was about the strongest person present here.
Rein did not use his Eye of Truth here, so they were still not sure but Rein believed that Stella would at least be very close to the right answer.
According to her, the strongest person living in this mansion was a blue grade transcendental powerhouse according to the measurement system that Rein had developed. One should know that it was extremely rare for anyone to transcend the normal ranking system.
And for a person to reach the blue grade, it was even rarer.
So this finally having a blue grade transcendental person truly made it to be one of the big powers of this world but it was still not enough to call themselves a superpower. But for a single family to have this much power was truly impressive.
Other than the strongest blue grade, there was another transcendental powerhouse in this family but he was only a purple grade. And it also looked like he had used up all his potential to reach this rank so it was extremely hard for him to make any progress in the future.
After Rein used his Eye of Truth to take a good look at everything, he was able to understand all of these in more detail. The blue grade transcendental person whom Stella saw was actually the founder of this family.
Rein was easily able to judge that as all the bloodlines of this family were connected to him.
Also that person\'s race was a bit special.
He was a hybrid of a dragon and a dark elf. When two people of different races met to create a baby, most of the time the baby would be a pure born of one race, either father\'s or mother\'s. But in some rare cases, a child could be born with the features of both races.
These children were called hybrids or in a more derogatory term, half of the dominant race.
Rein had seen a few halfs before and half elves were most common among them. Rein\'s girlfriend Lauren was a half elf herself. But a half of a dragon and a dark elf was super rare and Rein had never seen one before.
As Rein was thinking all these, Maria entered a hidden door and they found themselves in a different garden. Now it was time for Lauren to begin her challenge.